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What physical differences are there between a marathon runner and a non-marathon runner (regular person) of roughly the same stature? | I am assuming that you are referring to an exceptional endurance. There are two main types of muscle tissue in muscle and a third in cardiac muscle. The straited muscle also called slowtwitch and unstraited muscle called fast twitch. Fast twitch is what burst strength comes from. Slow is for endurance.
Good Marathon runners also have anatomical differences too. There is a general difference in anatomy regarding limb length vs body length and tendon length, heal and hip mechanics. A longer calcaneus, your heal bone, gives you a longer and quicker lever for your foot. A narrower foot also allows for a quicker transfer of weight from the outside of your foot to the inside and the big toe joint.
A narrow pelvis is a factor too. A narrow pelvis changes the gives a better 'Q' angle or the angle relationship between the road and the ground. A narrow pelvis will make for quicker transfer of body weight from one side to the other.
The longer the upper and lower parts of a leg will give you better 'Pop' mechanics. This is the hop that puts a runner up in the air while the lower while the foot pushes them forward. A longer upper leg carries the weight more forward when swinging under their body and up when they rise above vertical in front of the body.
Anatomic make up in the biggest difference. There are plenty of heavier people with a huge amount of endurance. My mother where I got my extremely high percentage of slowtwitch. She is a short big boned person that could drag a tractor tire across North America.
I have been out of the loop for 2 decades and am not confident in my descriptions regarding the biomechanics. Any better description of this would be appreciated. | [
"Various studies have shown marathon runners to be more economical than middle distance runners and sprinters at speeds of 6–12 miles per hour (10-19 kilometers per hour). At those speeds, film analysis has shown that sprinters and middle distance have more vertical motion than marathoners.\n",
"In athletics, spr... |
apps that ask for permission to my "location." could the person running the app tell when i'm not home? | Technically that's probably possible, but to what end? That information is typically used to just feed you relevant ads for nearby businesses assuming there isn't an obvious location function like showing you a map or finding nearby showtimes or something. | [
"Like many iOS applications that use Location Services, parental controls are available. Find My Friends synchronizes with other applications such as Maps and Contacts. The app is supported on the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Apple Watch, or on iCloud.com on Windows. A friend's location can be viewed in OS X 10.10 as ... |
Why are modern cities' ground level several meters higher than their ancient counterparts? | It's a side effect of people living there. Sediment builds up. I've written a couple answers on the topic, and I'll put in an edited version of [one of my previous answers here](_URL_0_)
***
There are a lot of reasons why sediment builds up over ancient ruins.
Sediment moves in many different ways. First, you have wind. Wind picks up small particles of sediment, and the stronger the wind, the bigger the particles it can pick up. Buildings create little traps for the airborne sediment, and when the wind slows down because it's being blocked by the crumbling buildings, the sediment suspended in the air drops out of suspension.
Second, you have water. Water erosion from rain can break down buildings, and spread the resulting sediment around a site. This is especially the case with buildings made from brick. For sites that are in valleys or near rivers, you also have the issue of flood plains. Rivers carry a lot of sediment, and if a river floods, it can deposit large amounts of sediment. This is the case in China, where Neolithic settlements are tens of meters underneath alluvial sediment, because the broad flood plains of the rivers have deposited so much sediment over time.
Third, you have gravity. It's absolutely possible to have sediment moving down a hill solely because gravity is pulling it. This is called colluvial deposits (as opposed to aeolian - wind and alluvial - water). If a site is at the bottom of a hill or is surrounded by elevated landscapes, a combination of water erosion and redeposition as well as gravity action will cause sediment to move down the hill and over the site.
Yet another cause for sediment accumulation [*and this is the one you are most interested in*] is by people bringing it into the site. This is called "anthropogenic deposition", and it can take many, many forms. People bring a TON of stuff into a site, from foodstuffs and building materials, and clothing, and tools, and all their possessions. Many of these things are made of perishable materials, such as textiles, wood, animal products. Perishable things decay into sediment. In addition, the building materials that people bring into the site are another major factor in sediment accumulation on ancient cities. In the Near East, the main form sites take is called a *tel*, which is a mound composed of the remains of cities built atop older cities. Basically a layer cake of civilization. It's so much easier in these instances to just knock down a building and cover it over and flatten it out than it is to dig it all up and haul it away. When a city is destroyed, they simply bring in a bunch of dirt, level the place out, and build on top of the remains. [Arlene Rosen's 1986 book *Cities of Clay: the Geoarchaeology of Tells*](_URL_4_) is the seminal work discussing this phenomenon of tell site formation. And as I said before, rainwater erosion on earthen buildings will cause a lot of sediment accumulation.
One other way you can get sediment accumulation is by the decay of organic matter. Just as in wooded areas, leaves, dead trees, and other decayed plant material can add to the soil level. Organic material decays into sediment.
But the basic gist of all of this is that dirt moves, and it moves in different ways, and it's made from organic things, and people bring it in sometimes, and it all works together in a complicated way.
If you want to study the nitty-gritty details of how sediment moves in archaeological sites, there are a couple very good books I recommend:
[Goldberg, Paul, and Richard Macphail. Practical and Theoretical Geoarchaeology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2006](_URL_1_)
[Rapp, George R, and Christopher L. Hill. Geoarchaeology: The Earth-Science Approach to Archaeological Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998](_URL_2_)
[Goldberg, Paul, Vance T. Holliday, and C R. Ferring. Earth Sciences and Archaeology. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2001.](_URL_5_)
I've done a lot of research in this area, as much of my graduate work was done in the realm of geoarchaeology. If you have any further questions about this, I would be happy to answer them.
***
Ok, so from all that we get the fact that archaeological sites get buried and that's why stuff is underground. Now, why does this happen to sites that are occupied for a long time? I wrote on this a little bit in a couple of places. Check [this thread here](_URL_6_) for a discussion on why people like to occupy the same areas for long periods of time and [this Monday Methods thread on archaeological methods](_URL_3_) for a discussion of studying stratigraphy and other things. It will help you visualize things a little bit.
The answer you are looking for is because people keep building on top of the ruins of old cities and it all piles up. It's so much easier to knock down a house and cover over the ruins than to have to cart it all away. | [
"The city lies at an altitude of 1050 meters. Due to the nature of the terrain, the city was built in a north-south orientation and occupies approximately 360 by 160 meters. Larger public buildings and the necropolis were built on flatter areas in the west, while dwellings were mostly built on the sloping part of t... |
What characteristics would a material need in order to be a perfect radiation shield for human space travel? | Many hydrogen atoms as part of its chemical formula. Water or polymers are the preferred materials for that reason. Ideally it should be liquid hydrogen, but that's too bulky and too difficult to keep cool enough to stay in liquid form.
This is deducted from the Z/A factor in the [Bethe formula](_URL_0_), where Z is the atomic number and A is the atomic mass. This fraction is 1 for hydrogen and nearly 0.5 for most other elements.
Still, "perfect" radiation shield is a big term. Even with liquid hydrogen a shield to provide good protection would be too massive to be launched with any realistic budget. The energy of cosmic rays is just too high, they will traverse anything you put in their way.
Edit: forgot to mention another important reason. High Z materials have a large nuclear cross-section area. This increases the probability of the incident particle colliding with an atomic nucleus and producing secondary radiation.
| [
"The usual method for radiation protection is material shielding by spacecraft and equipment structures (usually aluminium), possibly augmented by polyethylene in human spaceflight where the main concern is high energy protons and cosmic ray ions. On unmanned spacecraft in high electron dose environments such as Ju... |
Are these good books to get for an thorough overview of the topics they focus on? | Julian Thompson's 'Forgotten Voices from Burma' is a collection of oral accounts from the Burma campaign 1942-45. It's good if you're looking for first hand account of the fighting but the context provided is minimal and the work is far from thorough. It omits a lot to focus exclusively on the accounts. | [
"The University of Iowa Center for the Book is a research program dedicated to the past, present, and future of the book. Located in the University of Iowa Graduate College, the Center integrates practice in the art of the book with study of the book in society. The Center offers curricula in the arts of printing, ... |
What would the temperature of the earth be if the axial tilt was 54 degrees? | The article is [here](_URL_0_) and the abstract says the mean temperatures are 14^o C to within a few degrees for all tilts. However, the variations are huge for large tilts (not surprisingly, because it'd basically be day or night for half the year).
I cannot access the article, even through my school's network... | [
"The exact effects of these changes can only be computer modelled at present, and studies have shown that even extreme tilts of up to 85 degrees do not absolutely preclude life \"provided it does not occupy continental surfaces plagued seasonally by the highest temperature.\" Not only the mean axial tilt, but also ... |
why aren't all screwheads philips? | Robertson (The Canadian): High levels of torque. Doesn't Cam out. Speeds up production. Cheap. Designer was a crazy tinfoil fuckhead that didn't let anyone else but him make them. Not wide spread except Canada.
Phillips (The Cross): Cams out when too much pressure is applied. Only 5 different drivers. Literally designed to destroy the driver before the screw if the correct one is used.
Slot (The Flathead): Simple as fuck to make. Discourages power tool use. Annoying as fuck.
Cross (The Double Flat): Slot x 2. When you fuck one up, there's one more to bail the screw out.
Pozidriv (Phillips Mk2): Phillips on torque steroids. Incompatible with phillips.
Hex (Mr. Allen): generally same benefits of Square. Wrenching commonly available.
Hexalobular (The Torq): Loltorque.
Phillips/Square (The Compromise): Best of both worlds. Select based on needs.
Every-Single-"Tamper-Resistant"-Screw (The lol): Grind a slot, use flathead. Problem = No Problem. | [
"Many modern electrical appliances, if they contain screws, use screws with heads other than the typical slotted or Phillips styles. Torx is one such pattern that has become widespread. It is a spline tip with a corresponding recess in the screw head. The main cause of this trend is manufacturing efficiency: Torx s... |
how do circuit boards work to run software and create images? | Circuit boards don't do any of that, they are merely a support for the "wiring" between the electronic components that do the work.
In the old days, you'd hook electronic components together with actual pieces of wire. Today, the number and complexity of connections on something like a computer makes that infeasible, so the "wires" are now just conductive paths laid down on a plastic board that join the parts.
It's the electronics components--the integrated circuits and so forth--that do the work.
| [
"Virtual machine images are the containers that enable operating systems and applications to be isolated from physical resources. A group of virtual or physical images or that define a complete system, including network and storage characteristics, is defined as a configuration. For instance, a configuration could ... |
what does the schrödinger's cat experiment consist of? | Schrödinger's Cat is a thought experiment in applying the idea of quantum entanglement to non-quantum objects. There's not an actual experiment. | [
"Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment, usually described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It illustrates what he saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, applied to everyday objects. The thought experiment presents a cat that might be alive... |
how does a company like facebook buy another like snapchat | They buy the stocks from the existing owners, usually with the consent of the people running the acquired company.
Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:
1. [ELI5: What do you actually get when you buy a company? ](_URL_5_)
1. [ELI5: How are companies bought out by other companies/ multi-millionaires? Are all companies for sale? Can't the CEO or Founder just say No? ](_URL_4_)
1. [ELI5:How do larger companies buy smaller companies? If the net worth is larger, can the company buy the other company? ](_URL_1_)
1. [ELI5: What process does a company go through to purchase another company? I.E. When Facebook bought Instagram ](_URL_0_)
1. [ELI5: When a company buys another company, where does the money go? ](_URL_6_)
1. [ELI5: When one company buys another, where does that money go? ](_URL_3_)
1. [ELI5: what happens when 1 company buy another company ](_URL_2_)
| [
"Facebook recognized how successful Snapchat was with the launch of Snapchat stories back in 2014, so Facebook launched their own Facebook stories in 2017. This is a way for you to share, for twenty-four hours, what are you doing with your Facebook friends from the mobile app.\n",
"Facebook is a social networking... |
If TV remote controls use infrared light, why does my TV respond to my remote control when the path between the RC and the TV is completely blocked or when the remote control isn't even pointed at the TV? | If you have a flashlight, turn it on and off at some interval to convey a message, and put some object in the path of the light, would you be able to tell what the light pattern is by observing the room in general?
You'll see reflections off surfaces in your room - walls, ceilings, floors, etc. | [
"Unlike a light gun that senses light from a television screen, the Wii Remote senses light from the console's Sensor Bar (RVL-014), which allows consistent usage not influenced by the screen used. The Sensor Bar is about long and has ten infrared LEDs, five at each end of the bar. The LEDs furthest from the center... |
Why did the British make West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) one country in the 1947 partition? They are 2000 km apart! | The short answer is that Britain had little choice in the matter.
The issue of Indian independence was virtually a sure thing even at the start of WW-2 (except for the partition part). Britain put off discussions once the war started (because for Britons it was a war of existence). Indian leaders (mainly the INC - Indian National Congress) did not see it that way. When Japan came invading, Britain needed a major ramp-up of the Indian army, and even made a, "anything you want after the war" offer. The INC though saw this as a chance to kick out the British and inherit a unified India. Gandhi launched the Quit India movement, which unlike the previous non-cooperation movement was not completely non-violent. Viceroy Lord Wavell took advantage of the major military build-up he was afforded, and clamped down hard (most INC leaders were jailed, and civil unrest was forcefully put down). The AIML (Jinnah-headed All India Muslim League) used this opportunity to expand its presence in the Legislative Assembly (which was the premier body representing the Indian electorate), winning every by-election in Muslim constituencies till it had almost 25% of the seats in the assembly. This ensured that when the time came, the INC's claim of also representing all Indian Muslims was weakened further.
In July 1945, with WW-2 winding down, Lord Wavell released the INC leaders and started the process of handing power to an interim government. This was also when the British public voted in a Labor government with an overwhelming majority. Atlee, the new PM, was known to be pro-Indian independence. Parliament itself was largely either in favor of it or indifferent, with only a few imperialists like Churchill insisting that Britain needed to hold on to India. The economics of holding India had long since been working against Britain and debt was a huge concern after WW-2. Attlee puts together a Cabinet Mission to settle the issue, and three representatives are sent to India (in July 1946). This includes Sir Stafford Cripps, who had led an earlier mission in the 30's (which Attlee was a member of).
Now Britain's primary preference was to leave behind a strong and stable India that would remain friendly to Britain and British interests. The "first gusts of the Cold War were already being felt in 1946", and there were valid concerns of how well a small nation made up of only the provinces in the North-West could hold up against a new Afghan invasion, especially one that was Soviet-backed. This had implications for the security of India as well. Moreover, Labor politicians had good relationships with the INC - something Jinnah was always suspicious of - which made them naturally sympathetic to the INC's no-partition stance.
So ultimately Jinnah had to force the issue offering Britain and the INC with only two choices - partition or chaos. As the WW-2 military build-up was winding down, civil unrest had restarted. Soldier mutinies were becoming disturbingly common and "Quit India" graffiti appearing in their quarters. To this Jinnah added the element of communal riots through this Direct Action Day on Aug 16, 1946. The only question then was how the new nations would be formed.
Lord Wavell's initial vision was that Pakistan would only comprise the Muslim heavy-majority provinces, and not the "mixed" ones like Punjab and Bengal, which would then stay with India. Jinnah on the other hand wanted Pakistan to include some Hindu majority areas to make the new nation "economically viable". For one he not just wanted Bengal, but also wanted it to include Western Bengal (for Calcutta) because it was economically integrated with the East. So a compromise had to be arrived at. This was done on the basis on the census and the religion of the populations of each of the border districts.
So the better question would be, what was Jinnah thinking trying to build one country with two parts separated by thousands of miles of potentially hostile territory? It would seem that he wasn't thinking about it too much. He was in a rush to see Pakistan formed because by Aug 1947, he knew he had only months to live. He also was largely both liberal and elitist, so did not quite envision either how horrific partition would turn out to be (though he might have had an inkling after the bloodbath of Direct Action Day). He also might never have imagined India and Pakistan would end up with one of the most hostile borders in the world. He claimed that the fervor of Islamism would eventually cool down (Hindu right-wingers were not a factor in Indian politics at the time. The INC was liberal secularist, though individual members might have had different views) and the two nations would become friendly neighbors coming to the aid of each other in times of need.
TL;DR:
Britain (Cabinet Mission) wanted to keep India unified. Lord Wavell (last Viceroy before Mountbatten) thought Bengal would stay in India, if India was divided. Jinnah was responsible for East Pakistan becoming a reality. He might have been a little unclear of it's longer-term implications (but that is not the question being asked).
Edit: corrected date for Direct Action Day.
**Sources:**
*Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India - Lawrence James*
*Freedom at Midnight - Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins*
*A History of India, Volume 2 - Percival Spear* | [
"The end of British rule in India in August 1947, accompanied by the Partition of India, gave birth to a new country named Pakistan which constituted Muslim-majority areas in the far east and far west of the Indian subcontinent. The Western zone was popularly (and for a period of time, also officially) termed West ... |
why it's not fair for soldiers in the military to be charged for the same crimes as civilians. | Can you give an example?
I was in the Navy and we had a stricter set of rules that we had to go by. | [
"Lying about military service or wearing a uniform or medals that were not earned is criminalized in some circumstances, especially if done with the goal of obtaining money or any other kind of tangible benefit, though laws vary by country.\n",
"The non-service-related crimes of servicemembers do not fall into th... |
culturally, why are celebrities generally entertainers and not scientists? aren't they more important? | Celebrities also display features that are relevant to our base desires (ex. physical attractiveness, sociability, emotional depth, athleticism, etc.), and we subconsciously hone in on these things. That's why they can become so popular. | [
"However, a great many celebrities are clearly not \"intellectual\" achievers nor notable for any cognitive or analytic powers, e.g. Kim Kardashian, professional sports figures or other athletes. While they may through sheer exposure become involved in causes or controversies (as Paris Hilton did in the US presiden... |
meteorologically speaking, why is it suddenly so extremely warm in western europe? | It really should be called **runaway global warming**, to tell the truth. But to answer your question -
Approx 20 years ago the weather was like a fair dice (1.2.3.4.5.6) So there was always an equal chance of any temperature, rainfall, humidity, snowfall etc etc ; and approx 1 in 3 chance of an extreme weather event
But Climatologists agree that the dice has become loaded within these 20 years (1.1.3.4.6.6) . The chances of throwing extreme events has doubled (approx) so in any calendar year you should expect at least one fucked up weather event in your location
This is difficult for climate deniers to understand but global warming can cause instability which can cause extreme cold (eg USA/Canada last winter) | [
"The winter affected many other European countries. Similar cold periods and snowfalls were seen in much of Central Europe and the southern Baltic region. De Bilt, near Amsterdam in the Netherlands, experienced its worst winter since 1790. Because of the anticyclone to the north of the United Kingdom, several incom... |
would you have to breathe if you had a very constant supply of liquid oxygen? | Liquid oxygen would kill you, since oxygen needs to be at bout -180c/-300f to be liquid.
However, it *is* possible to breathe heavily oxygenated liquid, which I think is what you mean. You can read about it [here](_URL_0_). | [
"Possible medical uses of liquid breathing (which uses pure perfluorocarbon liquid, not a water emulsion) involve assistance for premature babies or for burn victims (if normal lung function is compromised). Both partial and complete filling of the lungs have been considered, although only the former has undergone ... |
I need help finding out what this animal is. | Can't offer advice, but I happened to see one in SE PA yesterday. Shape of it looks akin to a stink bug. | [
"While collecting the animals on their checklist, the crew discovers a small black creature with a third eye on a stalk attached to its head. Even though it is not on the list, Leela decides to rescue it as well, names it Nibbler, and places it in the cargo hold with the other animals. When Fry, Leela, and Bender r... |
since https is secure why don't all sites use it? why isn't it the default? why even have http? | price - you gotta buy a https certification.
latency - it's slower cos more shit needs to be done
bandwidth increase - cos you gotta send more shit for encryption
cpu load - gotta use cycles for encryption/decryption.
backwards comparability - not all browsers across all os's/devices/whatever can support it.
type of website - the majority of websites do not require encryption and it's just wasted if it's used. | [
"Historically, HTTPS connections were primarily used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web, e-mail and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems. , HTTPS is used more often by web users than the original non-secure HTTP, primarily to protect page authenticity on all types of websites; sec... |
Primary sources for Cosimo de Medici | Hi, you’d be interested in one of the [Monday Methods posts on Finding and Understanding Sources](_URL_0_). I’ll specifically highlight the advice to ask one of your campus librarians. As you’ve discovered, Google can’t discern different types of sources. Your librarians are specifically there to teach you how to use their catalog and help find things like this, so take advantage of that. | [
"The \"Pandectarum Medicinae\" is an encyclopedia with almost no original thinking. It has considerable value to historians as a document reflecting the state of pharmacology and medicine in Europe in the late medieval era. The method of presentation in \"Pandectarum Medicinae\" is that a medicinal substance is nam... |
how does a float in fuel gauge accurately read fuel level if the car is moving and the fuel is sloshing around all the time? | First of all, most fuel tanks nowadays are baffled, this is to stop the fuel sloshing about. The reason for this is that modern fuel injection cars must have a constant supply of fuel, if the fuel sloshed about and the pick up pipe is exposed and sucks in some air the engine will (at best) cough, potentially it could even stop completely, which isnt good..
Most of the time the fuel sender is placed somewhere near the middle of the tank, so that any effects are minimised.
Nowadays the sender isn't directly connected to the gauge, the sender connects to an ECU (typically the body module), this processes the signal from the sender and puts it on the canbus network from where it is picked up by the dash gauges. This does allow for a little processing of the data to go on. I would suggest the ECU probably smooths the signal to remove big spikes, thus giving a more reliable reading.
Regardless of all of this in most cars ascending or descending a hill does usually cause the fuel gauge to give false readings. They aren't a very accurate indicator - just a rough guide, but thats good enough. | [
"Fuel Quantity Indication System (FQIS) monitors the amount of fuel aboard. Using various sensors, such as capacitance tubes, temperature sensors, densitometers & level sensors, the FQIS computer calculates the mass of fuel remaining on board.\n",
"Corrected fuel flow is the fuel flow that is required by an engin... |
price elasticity | The "Price elasticity of Good X with respect to Y" is the percentage change in Y induced by a 1% increase in the price of Good X.
To make a more concrete example, suppose that X is hamburgers and Y is demand for hamburgers. The current price of hamburgers is $1, and 1,000 people are willing to buy a hamburger at that price. Imagine raising the price to $1.01. This higher price may drive away buyers, specifically people who were willing to buy at $1 but not at $1.01. But how big will the response be? That's what elasticity is for.
Suppose the new demand for hamburgers is 995 people. Then the price elasticity of demand for hamburgers is 0.5. Economists would say that this is an "inelastic" response. In percentage terms, the demand for hamburgers fell LESS than the increase in the price. Money spent on hamburgers went up (from $1,000 to 1,004.95).
We could instead observe that the new demand for hamburgers is 985 people. Then the price elasticity of demand for hamburgers is 1.5. Economists would say that this is an "elastic" response. In percentage terms, the demand for hamburgers fell MORE than the increase in the price. Money spent on hamburgers went down (from $1,000 to $994.85). | [
"Price elasticity also differentiates types of goods. An elastic good is one for which there is a relatively large change in quantity due to a relatively small change in price, and therefore is likely to be part of a family of substitute goods; for example, as pen prices rise, consumers might buy more pencils inste... |
"Truth Serum" from spy movies and the like, does it actually work? | Lying takes more mental effort than truth telling, so taking any downer should make a person more truthful. This effect can be seen with alcohol and other gaba agonists like ghb and benzodiazeprine, and such downers as barbituates and xanax. Psychedelics **may** have some use to this effect, but such use is unreliable and inconsistent. | [
"\"Truth serum\" is a colloquial name for any of a range of psychoactive drugs used in an effort to obtain information from subjects who are unable or unwilling to provide it otherwise. These include ethanol, scopolamine, 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, midazolam, flunitrazepam, sodium thiopental, and amobarbital, among... |
what makes the show 'friends' so watchable. why do so many people seem to be able to watch re-runs all the time? | Most of the episodes are self contained, have multiple subplots going at once, and those subplots are interesting but not interesting enough to be super memorable.
So when you see an episode, it isn't going to be the one where Rachel gets a bad perm, and you remember everything else about it. It's the one where she gets a bad perm, where Chandler gets stood up, and where Joey gets a demeaning part time job. It is likely you don't remember all the elements, or that they are all in the same episode, so it still holds some enjoyment for your on subsequent viewings. It also had a 10 year run, so there are a lot of episodes to remember.
*Seinfeld* and *MASH* had a similar quality that has helped them succeed in syndication. | [
"Part of the show's success is considered to be the relatively simple formula of following several teams on a race around the world. Because of this, viewers can live \"vicariously through the people on the screen\", according to Andy Dehnart of the RealityBlurred.com website. The show is often considered to be \"t... |
Why were slaves considered 3/5 a person? | The origin of the three-fifths number lies in a failed amendment to the Articles of Confederation which received the assent of 11 of the 13 states, but not the unanimous consent necessary to become law. Under the Articles of Confederation, each state was responsible for raising a share of taxes to be used to fund the national government, and the amendment would have fixed each State's responsibility for raising taxes in proportion to its free population plus three-fifths of its slave population.
The purpose of the amendment was to provide for an equitable apportionment of taxes between the States. The general idea was that each State should pay in proportion to its wealth, but that determining this amount was overly difficult, so instead population would be used as a proxy for wealth.
From the Northern point of view, slaves represented a state's productive capacity just as much as free laborers. From the Southern point of view, slaves were a capital good, like farm animals or equipment, and it would be unfair to tax both the owner and his property. Various assessments of the economic productivity of slave labor were made (1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4) before 3/5 was adopted as a compromise measure.
The three-fifths number that had been adopted by the earlier failed, but majority-approved, proposal was in turn adopted up by the Constitutional Convention during drafting. The Constitution, as originally ratified, use the number for two purposes — it tied *both* federal representation and *direct* federal taxation to the number of free citizens, plus three-fifths of the number of slaves.
The relatively unreflective adoption of this number is indicative of the Framers' inability to fully contemplate how the new government under the Constitution would be different from the old government under the Articles. Whereas the Articles had relied entirely on taxation apportioned between the States, the Constitution allowed both for direct and apportioned taxation *and* for indirect and unapportioned taxation. After a few attempts at direct taxation (e.g. a window tax) it became clear that indirect taxation, such as alcohol taxes and import duties, was a much more palatable policy, and direct taxation fell by the wayside.
That left the compromise only half intact. Northern states would have liked to see the slaves counted fully for calculation taxation and not-at-all for calculation representation. Southern states wanted the reverse, counting their full population for purposes of representation, but only their free population for purposes of taxation. Counting slaves the same way for *both* taxation and representation meant that *any* number was going to represent some sort of concession and trade-off for *both* Northern and Southern states — regardless of how arbitrary the actual number might be.
But with only the representation aspect of the compromise truly operative, the number came to mean quite a lot. A number originally devised to provide an in-the-ballpark way to calculate the relationship between population and economic productivity had found its way into becoming a number that gave free citizens in the slave states a greater voice in the government than free citizens in the free states. | [
"The slaves were the largest strata, one at the bottom among the Soninke like other West African ethnic groups, and constituted up to half of the population. The slaves among the Soninke people were hierarchically arranged into three strata. The village slaves were a privileged servile group who lived apart from th... |
the different levels of partner at a law firm | This is gonna be an overly detailed answer because I'm a lawyer at a big NYC law firm and currently want any excuse not to do my work.
First, it's important to note that in the United States law firms are a special type of business known as a partnership. This is in contrast to the business type known as a corporation. There are lots of technical and legal distinctions between the two involving how they are owned the liabilities that people who own them accrue but that's not particularly important to the answer. Corporations are owned by shareholders and run by an executive. Technically speaking, none of those people are liable for the corporations debts only the corporation itself is. Partnerships are owned and usually run by, the same people. Furthermore, the partners are on the hook for the obligations of any of the other partners. There are lots of arguments for and against why people think this is the better way to organize lawyers but I'll save that rant for another post.
In short, an equity partner just means a regular partner. They are the people who own a portion of the firm. Technically an equity partner is an equal partner to any other equity partner in a firm and all decisions about the firm (i.e. the partnership) has to go through the partners. In practice, the exact power of any individual partner can vary because of a contract but that's generally what an equity partner is. So in sum, they are the owners of the business and they get the profits.
There can be junior equity partners who have significantly reduced rights or profits from a partnership. Sometimes these people may have such intensely reduced rights they may be partners in a very limited sense. These are usually what's called junior partners. Usually they will share in the profit structure but to a much reduced degree.
Some law firms call "junior partners" people who are just higher than associates but not actually partners. This has become more common in big law firms as a way to give people more power/money/position over associates but without bringing them truly into the partnership structure. My firm has this status but calls them something else. This is also what is known as a non-equity partner. They don't share in the profit and are instead just paid a set salary.
Associates are lawyers who don't have an equity stake (ownership) in a firm but are supposedly on the track to becoming a partner at the firm. I say supposedly because at big law firms like on the good wife, 95% of associates will not make partner. In a big law firm associate-ship follows a class model where you start as a first year and move up every year (assuming there aren't outside circumstances). Each increase in year usually corresponds with a raise and a greater amount of responsibility. Some firms have people who have forever associates.
Lastly, there are staff attorneys. Staff attorneys usually have similar responsibility levels to low and mid-level associates but there is no pretensions about ever making them a partner.
This is of course somewhat limited to the big firm structure. Smaller firms may do things slightly differently (they have much less regimented rules for what it means to be an associate for example).
Hope that helps! I'm happy to answer any more questions if it keeps me from my work! :) | [
"In law firms, partners are primarily those senior lawyers who are responsible for generating the firm's revenue. The standards for equity partnership vary from firm to firm. Many law firms have a \"two-tiered\" partnership structure, in which some partners are designated as \"salaried partners\" or \"non-equity\" ... |
This is more of a meta question but where do most of you find your sources? | If you have access to it, I use JSTOR very often when I look for publications. I also use google scholars, but I might be using it wrong because I have a hard time getting interesting papers out of it.
What I also do is read bibliographies at the end of (good) general history books related to the subject that interests me. It is a goldmine when it comes to finding sources. Usually you will find more specialized sources in the bibliography that have been summed up in the book, then in the specialized book you will find even more specialized sources, etc. I don't know if that's really a "database", but a good bibliography and the access to a library seems close to it. | [
"The Sources website is built around a controlled-vocabulary subject index comprising more than 20,000 topics. This subject index is underpinned by an 'Intelligent Search' system which helps reporters focus their searches by suggesting additional subjects related to their search terms. For example, a search for \"c... |
Why were the White Huns called White Huns? | Maybe not related genetically, but either adopted the name or were simply assigned the name based on the similarity of their lifestyle, beliefs and war practices.
_URL_0_ | [
"The 6th-century Roman historian Procopius of Caesarea (Book I. ch. 3), related the Huns of Europe with the Hephthalites or \"White Huns\" who subjugated the Sassanids and invaded northwestern India, stating that they were of the same stock, \"in fact as well as in name\", although he contrasted the Huns with the H... |
what is the economic rationale for the u.s.'s 10 biggest tax breaks? | I'll take a crack.
Disclaimer: You're asking for rationale. I will attempt to provide. Whether it's a good rationale is up to you.
> Employer paid health insurance
2 reasons. One, it's compensation. Generally compensation isn't taxable from the employer end. Employers usually don't pay income taxes on what they pay you. You do, though. The other is health insurance is expensive, and allowing both employers and employees to deduct from their income what health benefits they give you can help someone get better (or some) coverage that they might not otherwise be able to afford
> Dividends and long term cap gains
Presumably, this money has been already taxed through income taxes or other taxes done when someone receives money. Preferential treatment for dividends equalizes that a bit, plus it encourages investment in the first place. Same with long term cap gains. The government encourages longer term holding of securities. Essentially it subsidizes non-career security traders. Joe and Jane who shift the portfolio once a year aren't going to be hit with the same taxes as someone who daytrades for a living.
> Active foreign corporation deferrals
This isn't so much a tax break as it is what the title says, a deferral. The US is one of the only countries in the world that has a global tax scheme. Corporate income earned by US corporations gets taxed the same way worldwide. Most countries have a territorial scheme, where taxation happens in the country it is earned, and they call it good. US corporations get taxed in the nation it's earned in and in the US. So they set up foreign corporations that the parent in the US controls. Money is earned in that foreign corporation and, because it's foreign, subject to that country's corporate tax. The US only gets its share when the money is repatriated to the parent company. If we decided to double tax all monies earned by US subsidiaries in foreign countries regardless of repatriation, US companies would be at a significant disadvantage compared to those organized in another. In part, this disadvantage is what causes corporate inversions. Essentially, parent companies otherwise based in the US fleeing to Europe and setting up US subsidiaries to take advantage of a better corporate tax scheme.
> Retirement plans
Retirement saving makes people not as poor when they retire. It also eases pressure on social programs. The government wants to encourage people saving for retirement. By offering tax advantaged retirement plans, it gives people an economic reason to save for retirement now rather than at 55 when they're 10 years from retirement.
> Mortgage interest deduction
People owning homes is good. It builds wealth. Wealth is good for the economy. Making it slightly less expensive to buy and maintain a home is good.
> Earned income tax credit
Poor people don't make a lot of money. Earned Income Tax Credit essentially functions as a wage subsidy. If a person makes a certain amount of money, they get a certain amount of money from the government. The distribution functions as a bell curve. Practically, the EITC does 2 things, 1) It encourages labor participation by subsidizing wage and self employed work. 2) It puts money directly into the hands of poorer people, who tend to spend it rather than save it, which stimulates the economy to a degree.
> Tax deduction for taxes
The government doesn't want you to pay taxes on the money you use to pay taxes. To them, it doesn't make any sense. It would be a very real case of double taxation. Instead, it would rather you spend the money to stimulate the economy.
> defined benefit contribution plans
This is more a deferral than a tax break. Eventually I'm going to be taxed on that money that my employer takes from my paycheck to fund my pension program. Either way, same rationale as with the defined contribution program. Retirement savings is good because poverty is bad for the economy.
> Child Tax Credit
Children are messy, loud, and expensive. The government can't help with them being messy and loud, but they can help with the expense. By helping make children less expensive, they do 2 things. 1) put more money into peoples pockets, which stimulates the economy when they spend it, and 2) encourages having children. Long term, children are good for the economy, because they will work and make money and pay taxes while older people do not work, pay fewer taxes, and absorb more government money through Social Security and Medicare programs. Young people are good for the economy, so the government encourages the production of young people.
> Subsidies through Health Exchanges
I think they're talking about the ACA health insurance exchanges (_URL_0_). Similar rationale to the employer health insurance deduction. By directly providing a subsidy for poorer people, the government makes health care less expensive for the direct purchaser. Making it less expensive enables people to purchase healthcare better than what they could afford without subsidy, or lets people purchase it at all. Long term, people that have a healthcare plan tend to use preventative services and non-emergency hospital care more, lowering overall costs. | [
"Some argue that the U.S. corporate tax rate at 35% is the \"highest in the industrialized world\", while others argue it isn't. The rate varies from sector to sector, and can be as low as 21% in the manufacturing industry. A high tax rate would place the U.S. at a \"competitive disadvantage in the global marketpla... |
Why are so many nerve/seizure related drugs used for treating mental illnesses? | The real reason is "because some of them help, sometimes, and the rest is immaterial." But that's not a very satisfying answer.
Anticonvulsants work by altering neurotransmission, like virtually all drugs used in psychiatry. You can't treat the brain without, you know, treating the brain. For instance, carbamazepine blocks sodium channels on neurons, making them less likely to fire rapidly and repeatedly. This effect is helpful for seizures, but also for mania. Names like "anticonvulsant" and "antidepressant" really only reflect the intention of whoever developed them, not their actual potential. (Venlafaxine and duloxetine were both developed as antidepressants, though.)
The reverse happens, too. Amitriptyline was among the first antidepressants, but is now much more commonly used for neuropathic pain, migraines, or sleep. Benzodiazepines were developed for anxiety, but are the first-line treatment if a seizure doesn't resolve quickly. As for cholinesterase inhibitors like donepezil for dementia, is that a neurologic drug or a psychiatric drug? | [
"Both military and civilian American intelligence officials are known to have used psychoactive drugs while interrogating captives apprehended in its War on Terror. In July 2012, Jason Leopold and Jeffrey Kaye, psychologists and human rights workers, had a Freedom of Information Act request fulfilled that confirmed... |
Do creatures with very short lifespans develop fatal diseases at the same rates as humans? | Mice have a much higher likelyhood of developing cancer then humans do ([source](_URL_2_)) but there lifespan is in the years range. There is as far as I'm aware very little research on cancer in insects although we do have examples of specific mutant fruit fly strains that are more likey to develop cancer. [See here](_URL_0_).
Alzheimer's is as far as we can tell unique to humans although mouse models have been developed that have similar symptoms. Note that this does not mean that other animals cannot develop dementia, but it generally occurs in mammals where they have lived long past the lifespan they would survive without human assistance. This is what one sees for example with [feilne dementia](_URL_1_). | [
"Almost all animals who survive external hazards to their biological functioning eventually die from biological aging, known in life sciences as \"senescence\". Some organisms experience negligible senescence, even exhibiting biological immortality. These include the jellyfish \"Turritopsis dohrnii\", the hydra, an... |
how does a country rebuild after a total destructing war? | After a war or natural disaster there might be a lot of people without work, home or food. You start making those people farming, gathering resources and building homes. Just start with the basics. When people have the basics there will be enough people left over to start industries to make life easier. You just start with the building blocks and work your way up. | [
"Areas devastated by war or invasion challenge urban planners. Resources are scarce. The existing population has needs. Buildings, roads, services and basic infrastructure like power, water and sewerage are often damaged, but with salvageable parts. Historic, religious or social centres also need to be preserved an... |
why is it impossible for a megalodon to still exist? | I'm shitting my pants afraid that someone says "well, actually it is still very possible as data from a research published yesterday reveals that blablablabla and scientists are now able to confirm that shit is indeed going down." | [
"While the earliest megalodon remains have been reported from the Late Oligocene, around 28 million years ago (mya), there is disagreement as to when it appeared, with dates ranging to as young as 16 mya. It has been thought that megalodon became extinct around the end of the Pliocene, about 2.6 mya; claims of Plei... |
why can't humans get suitable nutrition from vitamins and fiber capsules | You need energy to live, and we get that energy from the calories we eat. Generally, carbohydrates and protein have about 4 calories per gram, and fat has about 9 calories per gram.
We can also get energy from our stored fat. That is why most people can live a few weeks without eating before starving to death. There have been a few studies of morbidly obese people going long periods (a year) without eating and only taking vitamins and drinking water. That is extremely risky, and some have died. Still, in theory, it's possible!
What it comes down to, though, is that you need energy, and it's got to come from somewhere: your fat stores or the food you eat. | [
"As with the minerals discussed above, some vitamins are recognized as essential nutrients, necessary in the diet for good health. (Vitamin D is the exception: it can alternatively be synthesized in the skin, in the presence of UVB radiation.) Certain vitamin-like compounds that are recommended in the diet, such as... |
why does the us have to have buttons for crosswalks? | In a lot of cases, because it makes people feel better to be pushing the button, especially when they're impatient.
_URL_0_ | [
"Reports suggest that many walk buttons in some areas, such as New York City and the United Kingdom, may actually be either placebo buttons or nonworking call buttons that used to function correctly. In the former case, these buttons are designed to give pedestrians an illusion of control while the crossing signal ... |
What would be the result if we disproved the Equivalence Principle? | From the article:
> which negates Einstein's equivalence principle, which states that the laws of physics are the same everywhere.
This is actually the [*cosmological* principle](_URL_0_), not the equivalence principle. | [
"The equivalence principle, explored by a succession of researchers including Galileo, Loránd Eötvös, and Einstein, expresses the idea that all objects fall in the same way, and that the effects of gravity are indistinguishable from certain aspects of acceleration and deceleration. The simplest way to test the weak... |
Who killed Juvénal Habyarimana? | This is highly controversial and while there are plenty of theories on the subject - most books on the subject provide plenty of well reasoned speculation - including speculation that Habyarimana was either collateral damage or a bonus killing.
I generally prefer thinking of the killing as a political certainty where many parties were complicit on one level or another. Thwarting the development democracy in the area benefited many parties. | [
"Various opinions have been handed down concerning the circumstances of Jehoiakim's death, due to the difficulty of harmonizing the conflicting Biblical statements on this point (II Kings xxiv. 6; Jer. xxii. 18, 19; II Chron. xxxvi. 6). According to some, he died in Jerusalem before the Sanhedrin could comply with ... |
why do the majority of people want manny pacquiao to win this fight? | I don't really follow boxing, but the thing I'm seeing is that Pacquaio is the nice guy and Mayweather is a douche. We all just want to see the bad guy taken down | [
"After the fight, Mayweather remarked \"[Pacquiao] definitely had his moments in the fight. As long as I moved on the outside, I was able to stay away from those. He’s a really smart fighter ... My dad wanted me to do more, but I had to take my time. Because Manny Pacquiao is a competitor, and he’s extremely danger... |
When did the practice of forcing left handed persons to use their right hand begin? | A Roman soldier (at least in late Republic) was forced to use his left arm for his shield and his right arm for his gladius, regardless of handedness. The word sinister derives from the Latin word for left; the deeply superstitious Romans considered it as an unlucky direction. | [
"Beyond being inherently disadvantaged by a right-handed bias in the design of tools, left-handed people have been subjected to deliberate discrimination and discouragement. In certain societies, they may be considered unlucky or even malicious by the right-handed majority. Many languages still contain references t... |
how do computers calculate how long a second is if differences in temperature would create a subtle change in the time it takes for a process to complete? | Because the cycles in a computer are crystal regulated like a clock. It does not matter how long a process takes. | [
"This process took a total of 0.337 seconds of CPU time, out of which 0.327 seconds was spent in user space, and the final 0.010 seconds in kernel mode on behalf of the process. Elapsed real time was 1.15 seconds.\n",
"In computer science, a computer is CPU-bound (or compute-bound) when the time for it to complet... |
Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson died from complications after being shot by his own men. What happened to the soldiers who shot him? | I can tell you that the Brigade Commander suffered no repercussions. The 18th NC was in the Brigade commanded by BGEN James Henry Lane, an 1854 graduate of VMI, and a college professor before the war with a Master's from UVA. At the time of his promotion from Col. the November before he was the youngest flag officer in the Army of Northern Virginia at just 29 years old. And on 4 separate occasions, 3 of which occurred after Chancellorsville he stepped in to temporarily command divisions, in one case for several months.
After the war his reputation still very much intact he became the first Commandant of Virginia's new Land Grant College in 1872, the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical Institute, known today as Virginia Tech. | [
"Stonewall Jackson was gravely wounded at Chancellorsville and died soon after from pneumonia. Upon Jackson's death, Garnett returned to Richmond where the general's body lay in state. Despite his professional disagreement with Jackson, Garnett set aside any ill will against him and served as a pall bearer along wi... |
Magnets!!!! How does an external magnetic field affect an iron core solenoid | I believe they will just produce a lot of heat and cancel each others fields out. To have and amplification of the fields, you must have both of the coils with the same polarity and direction of electron flow. | [
"The material of a magnetic core (often made of iron or steel) is composed of small regions called magnetic domains that act like tiny magnets (see ferromagnetism). Before the current in the electromagnet is turned on, the domains in the iron core point in random directions, so their tiny magnetic fields cancel eac... |
why can we hear things on the other side of a wall better if we press our ear to the wall? | Sound is just something shaking really fast*. The sound source shakes the air, the air shakes the wall and the wall shakes the air in the next room.
Putting your head to the wall lets the wall shake your eardrum more directly (by transmitting the shakes to your skull) than if there were several feet of air in between.
(* More specifically: Sound is how we perceive the shaking of our eardrums.) | [
"\" It was not a wall of sound. A wall is something in front of you. You were INSIDE the sound. The very air you were breathing vibrated. The eyes shook in their sockets. I've never been attacked like this by music. \"\n",
"In an interview with Los Angeles magazine, he revealed, \"I’m 80 percent deaf in my left e... |
why are electric bills billed in kilowatt-hours, and not simply kilowatts? | Wait wait wait son. Kilowatt is how much it uses NOW! So it’s a sort of speed. By taking hours on the end it’s a physical measurement of energy. Meaning how much we’ve used total.
So my computer takes 400 kilowatts, but how much is that? If it stands online for an hour, a day or even 2 minutes it’s still using only 400 kilowatts!
So how much energy have we consumed? Well take hours. 400 kilowatt hours is equal to a computer taking 400 kilowatts for an hour. Or a 800 kilowatt engine, driving around for 30 minutes. And so on.
Kilowatt and kilowatt hours are two different measurements.
What you’re saying here is basically that we should measure water consumption in the speed of which the water exits the faucet instead of how much water is actually used.
| [
"Electric power is usually measured in kilowatts (kW). Electric energy is usually measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh). For example, if an electric load that draws 1.5 kW of electric power is operated for 8 hours, it uses 12 kWh of electric energy. In the United States, a residential electric customer is charged based ... |
Why does our immune system seems to handle
some infections on it's own pretty fine, while others
only with the help of medicine? For example, a
normal flu, vs. malaria, or dengue. | Very complicated answer - mostly it has to do with the evolution of the microbe.
Most of use are used to thinking about our immune systems as what determines how well we respond to viruses and other pathogens, but typically, it has more to do with the evolution of the pathogens themselves. The microbes that make us sick can run circles around our immune systems, and you can predict a lot about how sick a microbe will make us based on its method of transmission.
For instance: in order for flu to spread, it needs you up and walking around, going to the store, getting on public transit etc. It can make you miserable but still mobile, and you'll infect all of your neighbors. It doesn't matter to flu if you clear it after a week or two, you've probably already infected most of the people that you regularly come into contact with, so it's done with you.
Dengue and Malaria don't need you to be mobile, the mosquitoes make them them mobile. It's actually probably better for those pathogens if you're incapacitated, because you won't be swatting away the mosquitoes that are biting you if you've passed out in bed. At the same time, they want to keep you infected as long as possible - you're probably not going to saturate the potential recipients (arthropod and human) of your illness.
It's important to keep in mind when I use phrases like "want," that the pathogen isn't really making decisions - it's natural selection picking the variants that replicate and spread the best. | [
"The immune system is what keeps us healthy in spite of the many organisms and substances that can do us harm. In this issue, explore how our bodies are designed to prevent potentially harmful objects from getting inside, and what happens when bacteria, viruses, fungi or other foreign organisms or substances breach... |
Does the repulsion from two oppositely charged magnets have any affect on gravity's pull on them? | No, they should manifest as two different effects. | [
"It is often more convenient to model the force between two magnets as being due to forces between magnetic poles having \"magnetic charges\" 'smeared' over them. Positive and negative magnetic charge is always connected by a string of magnetized material, and isolated magnetic charge does not exist. This model wor... |
Is Germany in WW2 the new "Lost Cause"? | EDITED: Forgot my sources!
EDITED: Phrasing.
Hello,
First post on AH, so before I provide you with a theory (as I don't think this is 'answerable') I'll post a small blerb. My name's Victor Rinaldi, I'm a graduate of the University of Toronto, specializing in Criminology, but with an avid and amateur interest in military history. I'm a specialist in particular to the aspects of mounted warfare, that is Cavalry and what most modern military thinkers would consider as their 'spiritual successors' (Armored Reconnaissance, Armored Formations and Mechanization of Rifle units). While I'm not an expert in any one period, I can speak with some authority and with an appropriate amount of background reading for the Napoleonic era through to contemporary warfare.
Now, to posit a theory. First off, what you're describing is something approaching 'apologism', and this is largely a result of more balanced and honest approach to WWII History that began to come about after the 1970s. Authors like Max Hastings and Antony Beevor have made great pains to study the accounts of both sides and have begun to investigate numbers we have before taken for granted. A prime example is the number of tank losses at Prochorovka, Kursk. Traditional history has lauded this as 'the greatest tank battle of all time' and so on and so forth, but astute historians have largely dispelled that myth. It was, in essence, a suicide run by the RKKA's 1st Tank Army against a single (with elements of others) SS Division.
So...to put it more colloquially, the military skill of Germany has become far more apparent than ever before with less chauvinistic accounts being produced. Now, this is not to lay the blame on all historians, there are many books that do have a disastrously apologist or even blatantly pro-Nazi tone if you dig deep enough. I was unfortunate enough to read a book on the 33SS division (made up almost entirely of French ex-pats) where the author repeatedly made references of their 'defense of Europe from the true enemies' and had the gall to refer to them as Martyrs.
No, however, the new lean towards putting German soldiery and equipment on a pedestal is, if I had to take an educated guess, is a result of people reading these more honest histories and playing the Armchair general, the 'what-ifs' and 'if-it-were-not-for-Hitler' games of strategy in their heads. Men like Beevor and Hastings make it very clear that the German Army was hardened, determined and made of consumate professionals. Hastings refers to the German, not untruthfully, as 'the greatest army of the century' and lauds their personal weaponry and the tactical skill that even the most junior of leaders showed. However, he goes out of his way to contrast this with how they were defeated by a motivated and equally well equipped army of citizens - the British and American armies, who lacked the experience and military tradition of their foes, but were able to learn from their mistakes and overcome an enemy with an edge in tactical engagements.
The message Hastings is going for is that we should honor the 'reluctant dragons', these citizen-soldiers for fighting in the face of much experienced and hardened enemies. Many people, I feel, choose to let that get lost in translation and paint the picture black-and-white of the German professionals being betrayed by their regime as they hold back hordes of bumbling incompetents.
I could write a very impassioned and angry essay on this, but I think I'll cut this here. I'll be glad to elaborate further. It pains me to see people lose this message and actually believe Germany stood a chance, strategically and operationally, at winning the Second World War. They were doomed for the same reasons they were doomed strategically in World War One. Finally, while a healthy respect for their soldering abilities should be noted, no amount of tactical skill should blind someone to the political ends the German regime were aiming to achieve. Slipshod reading of modern histories often lead to such apologism.
Sources:
"SS CHARLEMAGNE: The 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS", Tissier, Tony Le. Pen and Sword Military, South Yorkshire, 2010.
"OVERLORD: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy" Hastings, Max. Touchstone Publishing, 1984, New York, New York.
"Stalingrad" Beevor, Antony. Viking Press, Penguin Books, 1999. London Press.
"Decision in the Ukraine...", Nipe Jr., George M. Stackpoole Books, 1996.
| [
"Germany lost the war because it was decisively defeated by a stronger military power; it was out of soldiers and ideas, and was losing ground every day by October 1918. Nevertheless, it was still in France when the war ended on Nov. 11 giving die-hard nationalists the chance to blame the civilians back home for be... |
this exchange between a muslim college student and jewish professor. | He said that the Muslim Student Association was affiliated with a terrorist group. She said that wasn't true because they never received support from said group. He said that, if they aren't affiliated, then does she condemn their actions. She refused. He continued pressing that point, eventually stating one of the group's beliefs, that the Jews should be rounded up and exterminated, which she said that she agreed with. | [
"60 Jewish and Muslim students from all over the world with a common goal of establishing peaceful relations between both religions participated. The conference consists of discussion committees, guest speakers, open dialogue panels and social events.\n",
"A PhD thesis \"Dialogue Between Christians, Jews and Musl... |
the hong kong v china conflict | Britain and China went to war 100 years ago. Long story short, Britain got to rule Hong Kong [until 1997](_URL_0_), when it reverted to Chinese control.
That means a good deal of people living in Hong Kong were used to western-style freedoms, and were essentially raised as British Citizens.
At first China let Hong Kong do it's own thing and be largely independent. However, now the Chinese government has enough support on the island that they're trying to assert more control. Namely, extradition.
Basically, if you break a Chinese federal law (like saying bad things about the government), you can be arrested and sent to mainland China. This means everyone in Hong Kong must now follow all of the Chinese rules.
The residents of Hong Kong don't agree with the rules and would likely rather prefer to be their own nation. Unfortunately, there is little international support, and anyone of significance helping Hong Kong would effectively be starting WWIII. | [
"The Hong Kong–Philippines relations refers to the relations of the Republic of the Philippines and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Under the Hong Kong Basic Law, the People's Republic of China is responsible for diplomatic and defence affairs of Hong Kong. However, Hong Kong enjoys significant autonomy in... |
what determines a professional's salary? | Supply and demand.
It is hard to become a doctor or an engineer, especially the highly specialized kind. Those specialized skills can mean life or death, or millions of dollars. If you want someone who can give you those sorts of results, you are in competition with a lot of other people, so you have to pay top dollar.
That is especially true in IT. There are a *lot* of specialties, and a rock star can easily be 10x as productive as an average engineer. Finding and keep top talent is hard, and they know it, so that drives the salaries up. | [
"However, only a fraction of men's professional football players are paid at this level. Wages may be much more moderate in other divisions and leagues, and a significant number of players are semi-professional. For example, the average annual salary for footballers in Major League Soccer (which started in 2009) fo... |
With a current lot of tension and debate over immigration in the West, what was the reaction to significant numbers of Chinese settling in many Western cities, and during what period was the establishment of Chinatown's taking place? | One major wave of immigration from China happened after the discovery of gold in California in 1849. Just like other migrants out to the area, many Chinese came in hopes of getting rich. About 1/4 of all miners in the gold fields were Chinese.
Often, when immigrants entered the United States, they end up living in areas populated by others who came from their home country or region. Chinatowns would have popped up somewhat naturally with the waves of immigration. San Francisco's Chinatown was established in 1848 as it was one of the first ports of entry for Asians coming to America.
Most of the immigrants from China were men. They came to the country looking for wealth, and many intended on returning to China once they made their fortune. This was a time of civil war and poverty in China, and migrating to California to make some quick money seemed like a good risk to take. With more and more Chinese coming to America with this intent, people started viewing them as a threat. They were seen as cheap labor because they didn't bring families (less mouths to support, less strain on local schools), because they were "faithful" workers never calling in sick and always working hard. Other miners saw the Chinese as taking THEIR wages and THEIR jobs (a sentiment echoed often throughout history against immigrants of any origin).
Much of the tension could probably boil down to racism. The Chinese men in California looked different, wore different clothes and hairstyles, and spoke a different language. They were "outsiders." Laws sprang up dictating what occupations they could hold, where they could live, and even who was allowed to enter the country.
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a huge restriction on immigration. It banned Chinese laborers from entering the country for 10 years. If any ethnically Chinese person left the country, they could not reenter without a special certification. Immigrants from Europe had the ability to become naturalized citizens after living in this country for a certain number of years. The Chinese immigrants were denied this path to citizenship and were instead had to live as permanent foreigners.
Some non-labor immigration was allowed, but in order to do so, those people would have to get a certification from the Chinese government, which was difficult to obtain. Now, as I mentioned earlier, most of the Chinese that came over were men. With the passage of the 1882 law, this meant that those men could never bring their families to the United States.
When this act expired in 1892, it was extended with the Geary Act. One notable addition to the Geary Act required all Chinese in the US to have certificates of residence proving they entered the country legally. After another 10 years (1902), the act was made permanent.
The Immigration Act of 1917 created an "Asiatic Barred Zone" which widened the ban beyond China to most of South Asia, India, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands.
The ban on immigration from China lasted until 1943 when the Magnuson Act was passed. This was the first time that Chinese in the US were allowed to become naturalized citizens. It also allowed for some new immigration, although the number was capped at 105 persons per year.
There were a myriad of other laws passed restricting what the Chinese who were already in the country could do for work and who they could marry, but I fear this is already way too long!! Suffice to say, the Chinese faced arguably the most severe prejudice of any ethnic group immigrating to the United States. | [
"Another cause for the eastward migration was the anti-Chinese sentiment that was generally felt in the West Coast Chinatowns, such as San Francisco, which was fueled by the economic downturn of the late 1860s. The laws and the courts generally gave little protection to the minority group and many fled eastward to ... |
Did the Russian Czar 1914's attempt to ban alcohol from Russian life have the same effects prohibition did on America? Namely rise of speakeasies and gangsters? | No, primarily because the attempt was short-lived and there was a war on. Instead, it helped start the Russian Revolution of 1917.
See *The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia* or *Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret History of the Russian State.* Both are by Oxford University Press; the latter book came out just this year and focuses on the entire history of vodka in Russia.
Mark Schrad, the author of that second book, is a pretty good scholar on the topic, and he makes the captivating case that the prohibition of alcohol weakened Imperial Russia at the same time that it encouraged dissent. (Incidentally, Schrad digs up one of the best stories of the 19th century -- the infamous 19th century trip by the future Tsar Nicholas II to America, where he spends a debauched handful of weeks drunkenly hunting across the Great Plains with Buffalo Bill and George Armstrong Custer.)
In any event, alcohol was blamed as a contributing factor after the Revolution of 1905. In 1909-10, the First All-Russian Congress on the Struggle Against Drunkenness convened in St. Petersburg and attracted thousands of delegates who were concerned with the effect alcohol was having on Russia. At the time, Imperial Russia's government had a monopoly on liquor production and sale, and the Congress concluded that monopoly had to go.
After war broke out, Nicholas II appointed his cousin commander of Russia's military, and that cousin, Nikolasha, asked for emergency Prohibition in the war zone. That request was granted, largely because Nicholas II viewed it as a way to keep order in the area.
After initial success, Nicholas made it permanent. Temperance advocates loved the notion and came up with all kinds of economic forecasts that showed Russia would make all kinds of gains -- even with millions of men heading off to war -- thanks to the fact that the nation's workers were no longer drunk.
Of course, this didn't happen. With no alcohol sales, Nicholas II blew a huge hole in his country's budget. And people still managed to get alcohol. In conscription riots, almost inevitably the liquor warehouses (which were still in business because restaurants and high-class hotels could still sell alcohol) were the first targets.
| [
"Prohibition as introduced in the Russian Empire in 1914 permitted the sale of hard liquor only in restaurants. It was introduced at the beginning of World War I under the premise that it would prevent the army from dealing with drunken soldiers. Other warring countries (e.g. the United Kingdom, France, and Germany... |
zeno's paradox | In order to get from point A to point B you must first reach the point between A and B. Let's call that point 1.
To reach point 1 you must first reach the point between point A and point 1. Let's call that point 2.
To reach point 2 you must reach point 3 - the point between point A and point 3.
Getting to 3 requires passing 4.
Getting to 4 requires passing 5.
There is an infinite progression of half-way points you must cross, and getting from one point to another takes a non-zero amount of time, therefore motion is impossible for it requires traversing an infinite set of distinct points.
But clearly in the real world things move all the time, hence the paradox. | [
"Zeno's paradoxes are a set of philosophical problems generally thought to have been devised by Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea (c. 490–430 BC) to support Parmenides' doctrine that contrary to the evidence of one's senses, the belief in plurality and change is mistaken, and in particular that motion is nothing but a... |
why amount of transgender people is increasing so much | Sampling bias. It's not that there are more trans people, it's that trans people are being open about their status because of much greater acceptance. You can see this in maps of how many people say they're gay or bisexual - the frequency in accepting states (~10%) is roughly double what it is in the Bible Belt (~5%).
> In 30 years time are these people going to regret their actions?
Best data suggests not - transition regrets are very low.
> How come 100+ years ago there were next to no trans people.
There were! The [Chevalier d'eon](_URL_0_) managed to transition publicly in the 1700s. But that wasn't an option for most people, both because of very regressive social attitudes and because modern treatments didn't exist.
> And if they could live that way back then, why not now?
Not all of them could. But if someone committed suicide due to dysphoria in 1709, we wouldn't likely know about it.
> I've seen people describe it as they either transition or kill themselves
For some people the distress is that extreme, yes.
> seems a bit drastic. You could just be a feminine guy for example.
Transition is not (only) about being masculine or feminine. I wasn't at all feminine pre-transition - actually I would've been best described by the word "neckbeard". I'm somewhat more feminine now, but still significantly more tomboyish than your average girl. Transition is about a body, hormones, and social interactions that don't work for you, not about subscribing to particular stereotypes. | [
"According to the American Psychology Association, around 64% of transgender people have annual incomes of less than $25,000. Another study found that transgender individuals are nearly four times more likely to make less than $10,000 annually when compared to the general population; on the other end of the spectru... |
how can agencies approve airline companies to overbook flights? | Overbooking is a well known practice and accepted practice in a range of industries.
The airline will lose money for every empty seat they have on an aircraft and, obviously, they don't want this.
It is also pretty common that not everyone who has booked a seat/flight actually shows up (medical emergency, mixed up dates, etc.), so by overbooking, airlines can be relatively certain that all of the seats on their aircraft will be full.
It sound silly, but an empty seat may result in a loss of $20 in concessions. In 2014, there were an estimated 102,000 flights every single day, and 102,000 x $20 suddenly adds up to a significant amount of money.
Overbooking will be the de-facto behavior of airlines, cruise lines, etc., until it is no longer profitable to do so - particularly since there is minimal risk to the overbooking airline (they can just bump you to the next flight and it's take it or leave it). | [
"During 1990, Orien Dickerson, then Vice-President of the company, was penalised by the United States Department of Transportation because he withdrew funds from escrow accounts for charter flights that still had to be carried out. In the charter airline business, it is common practice that prepayments from custome... |
why does the cleanliness of your environment (your room for example) affect your mental state so much? | It's weird since I've heard the same thing but reversed. I.e your room is a product of your mental health and that made sense to me as it's hard to clean up or do anything in general if you're depressed. Versus it being easy if you're in a happier one. | [
"Further research shows that an untidy environment can negatively impact many aspects of human health—such as mood and stress levels, memory capabilities, and even the ability to process other people's facial expressions. When people's personal space is \"de-cluttered,\" they are better able to sleep, focus, and ho... |
what it means to die from "exposure" | It's more of a blanket term to describe exposure to the weather, whatever that weather may be. Freezing or dying of heatstroke could be classified as types of death by exposure. | [
"The term immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH) is defined by the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) as exposure to airborne contaminants that is \"likely to cause death or immediate or delayed permanent adverse health effects or prevent escape from such an environment.\" Exam... |
if you're killed in war, what happens to your weapon? refurbished? recycled? destroyed? hand-me-down? | If the weapon is recovered it is supposed to go back to the armory to see if it is still serviceable, repaired and cleaned. If the weapon is damaged it is stripped for parts. If it is still in good shape it is stored for reissue. | [
"Optionally, a Recycler space can be made available, which will regenerate destroyed units. A recycled unit must be moved off the Recycler for another unit to appear, and it can be blocked by enemy units. There are three options: None, Half, and Full; Half will recycle only half the units you've lost.\n",
"Unexpl... |
why is there a large backlash against movements like bds (or other anti-israeli sentiment)? | Well. there are several reasons.
1) Its centered on Israel exclusivly, Israel has a much better human rights record then many countries around it, Egypt is currently flooding its border with gaza with sea water to block hamas infiltrations, Jordan killed more palestinians during black september then israel has killed in decades, Palestinians are intentionaly kept in refugeee camps in most arab countries with the intent that the only country that should provide a solution to the palestinians is Israel. So the BDS movement ignores any mistreatment of palestinians commited by anyr other country apart from Israel and also puts the entire weight of the palestinian problem on Israel, TL;DR they dont give a rats ass about any palestinian unless he´s being affected by a jew.
2) They use constant harrasment and intimidation tactics, Many artists that act in israel are harrased and shamed on social media and even in real life by BDS activists, There have been instances in whcih BDS activists have activily assulted and harrased business owners, In south africa a BDS activist put a pigs head in the Koshers food section of a supermarket, and have invited people responsible for terror attacks against civilians, showing that they have little morality as to the methods they use in their fight, TL;DR They bully people to boycott israel and often result to violence and one sided arguments.
3) Their actions seem to be more Anti Israel then pro palestinian, Presenting a scenario where if Israel disappeared tommorow everything in the middle east would magicly fix themselfs ignoring historical context and basis of the conflict, in many cases actually hurting the people they wanted to help, a good example is the west bank soda stream factory which had palestinians and israelis working side by side with both reciving equal pay and equal treatment, but becuase the factory was israeli the pressured the company to close it off and the palestinians were laid off, TL;DR they seem more intent on hurting Israel then actually finding a working solution to the situation.
so basicly in summery
1) they dont give a rats ass about palestinians being opressed in lebannon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, or any other arab country, Its only news when a jew or a israeli harms a palestinian.
2) they use violent and bully like tacticts to get their way, they have little interest in debate or discurose and their debate tactics seem to be "i win if i shout the loudest"
3) They seem to not be interested in any other solution beyond Israel = bad and should disappear. | [
"Critics of the movement, such as Elhanan Yakira, Ethan Felson, and Roberta Rosenthal Kwall, have argued that BDS is a campaign motivated by anti-Zionism and anti-Israel sentiment. Executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Malcolm Hoenlein called BDS a \"'politic... |
why does it cost over 10,000 to bury someone in the us? | There are several factors at work here. The first is professional services. You are hiring a funeral director to arrange and prepare your loved one for burial. The death also needs to be registered with the state and the executor needs paperwork so they can close the estate.
The is also the facilities. You need vehicles to transfer the body, a sterile preparation room to prepare the body. There also needs to be facilities to host visitations and funeral services. Death notices and clergy also need to be paid.
There is also merchandize like caskets, urns, vaults etc etc.
Once you combine the professional services, facilities and merchandize you get the prices that you do.
Source: former funeral director | [
"In the United States, there are more than 19,322 funeral homes, approximately 115,000 cemeteries, 1,155 crematories, and an estimated 300 casket sellers. The total revenue produced from the funeral industry in the U.S. alone was $14.2 billion in 2016. Enough embalming fluid is buried every year to fill eight Olymp... |
How did Pikemen fight other Pikemen? | Classical era spearman (at least in a greek army) would have fought in a phalanx, where the 1st row bears shields and the 2nd and 3rd rows hold spears above and through the wall of shield to create an armored front (based on your flair you probably know far more about this than I do). A 16th century pikeman would have fought slightly differently. Warfare during this period revolved around the relationship between the pike and the matchlock (or early firearm) also known as "Pike and Shot". Some formations, like the Spanish Tercio, (where pikeman remain in the middle and musketeers would remain on the outside) were meant to maximize the protection offered by the pikeman and combine this with the firepower offered by a gun. For example, if cavalry charged the Tercio, the musketeers would fire and then move to the center of the formation, while the pikeman would form a square on the outsides, protecting the musketeers. However, Gustavus Adolphus revolutionized these sort of tactics by putting his men linear ranks (often before this formations were set up by measurements which was time consuming and much more difficult to maintain, or in the case of the Tercio, formations were often too thick and were ridiculously vulnerable to artillery fire). This, the use of light and more importantly, mobile artillery, invention the bayonet and flintlock musket with a means to widely produce them, and the invention of the general staff and a few other key innovations started a mass change land combat which eventually would come to be the Enlightenment-era, the Revolutionary-era, and the Napoleonic-era of warfare.
Further reading:
[Pike and shot](_URL_1_)
[Tercio](_URL_0_)
[15th/16th era firearms](_URL_2_)
(Edit: Sorry if this really doesn't answer your question, got a bit carried away talking about 15th/16th era warfare in general. Also spelling) | [
"The pike, being unwieldy, was typically used in a deliberate, defensive manner, often alongside other missile and melee weapons. However, better-trained troops were capable of using the pike in an aggressive attack with each rank of pikemen being trained to hold their pikes so that they presented enemy infantry wi... |
why are all the olympics money losers except los angeles in 1984? what did they do that all other host cities refuse or were unable to do? | As far as I remember, most of the infrastructure was already in place. That's usually the biggest expenditure. | [
"The 1984 Summer Olympics marked the second time Los Angeles had staged the Olympic Games. Much like the 1932 Summer Olympics, Los Angeles was the only city to submit a bid. Los Angeles was elected as the host city at the 80th IOC Session in Athens in 1978. The cost overruns of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal ... |
computational complexity theory | Some problems are really easy to solve, like finding the ace of spades in a deck of cards that has been shuffled. Some problems are a little bit harder, like taking deck of cards that has been shuffled and putting it back in order. Some problems are a lot harder, like figuring out whether some combination of the cards in a hand you've been dealt add up to 50.
Computational complexity theory is about looking at problems and figuring out how hard they are for a computer to solve. Usually this means finding out how long a computer program will have to run to solve it. There are mathematical tools that computer scientists can use to say "this problem will always take a really long time to solve", even if computers get lots better or really smart programmers come along.
There are even some problems out there that we can prove won't *ever* be solved with computers, no matter how fast computers get in the future. | [
"Computational complexity theory is a branch of the theory of computation that focuses on classifying computational problems according to their inherent difficulty, and relating those classes to each other. A computational problem is understood to be a task that is in principle amenable to being solved by a compute... |
why are we forced to open our mouth while yawning? | You can learn to overcome the urge to open your mouth... especially if you are in boring classes or meetings where openly yawning is considered rude! It does require controlling the muscles in the back of your jaw and inner ear area - also very useful for equalising the pressure in your ears while flying or diving... | [
"Some cultures lend yawning spiritual significance. An open mouth has been associated with letting good immaterial things (such as the soul) escape or letting bad ones (evil spirits) enter, and yawning may have been thought to increase these risks. Covering the mouth when yawning may have been a way to prevent such... |
why is cursive writing the default writing style in russia but phasing out in english? | It is easier to write Cyrillic in cursive than in print. Д for example is annoying as fuck to write in print for example. Some people write in a mixed fashion with some parts cursive and some parts written.
Source: Know a Cyrillic language. | [
"Russian cursive is much like contemporary English and other Latin cursives. But unlike Latin handwriting, which can range from fully cursive to heavily resembling the printed typefaces and where idiosyncratic mixed systems are most common, it is standard practice to write Russian in Russian cursive almost exclusiv... |
How was king Alfred able to stop the great heathen army | The Great Heathen army wasn't some great, unstoppable force. In fact, they were very nearly defeated by the Northumbrians outside York shortly after their initial arrival in England. The *Anglo-Saxon Chronicle* and Asser's *Vita Ælfredi* charts a long series of battles throughout the late 860s and early 870s and Wessex continually fights the Vikings to a standstill. In 871 alone, Æthelred and Alfred fight something like 11 separate battles against Viking forces, *not* counting the myriad of smaller actions fought by local forces against Viking raiding parties. Asser illustrates the extent to which this constant attrition is bleeding Wessex dry in its need to *always* have men at war.
What actually turns the tide decisively towards Alfred is the combined reform of the defensive network and the *fyrd* system. Based around fortified sites called *burhs*, Alfred's network is designed to comprehensively curtail the Viking ability to manoeuvre quickly, which forms the basis of much of their strategy. The foundation of the network are the *burhs*, fortified garrison sites situated at prominent river crossings, road junctions, bridges, landing sites, etc. These are combined with a whole series of regional strongholds, all connected by a series of communication sites. This system means that a constant watch is maintained along the frontier, and Viking forces are denied strategic mobility, while Anglo-Saxon *fyrd* garrisons are able to utilise the roads and rivers to respond rapidly to any threats, as well as to rapidly join up with other English forces to force the Vikings into battle at sites of the English choosing and with numerical superiority wherever possible.
The *fyrd* system itself appears to be an overhaul of a pre-existing system. The system provides for the closest thing to a semi-professional standing army, with a rotational system providing a constant garrison presence at *burghal* sites meaning that response times are much quicker and there is the possibility to provide at least a basic level of formational training to English forces. A document known as the *Burghal Hidage* shows how land in each county was assigned to provide supplies for the garrison, and how large the garrisons of each site were.
A good illustration of the effectiveness of the system comes in 878, when Wessex is supposedly over-run by the Vikings. At the same time as Alfred is attacked at Chippenham, a large Viking raid attacks Exeter, but is destroyed by the city's garrison, and Alfred's Easter counterattack is bolstered by the garrison forces of Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset and Hampshire, which suggests that those areas remained unconquered. Other prominent victories at least in part due to the *burghal* system happen in 893 and 911. | [
"The Lostwithiel campaign proved to be the end of Essex's military career. His army participated in the Second Battle of Newbury on 27 October. However, the Earl was sick in Reading at the time. His conduct in the West Country had frustrated Cromwell, now the most prominent member of the House of Commons following ... |
how did the us have jurisdiction over japan's unit 731 in terms of exchanging immunity for their research when most of the victims were chinese or russian? | The simple answer is that they were arrested by US forces, and it was the US that won the war on Japan. You could certainly argue that it was not "fair" that the US got this information, but this occurred at a time when countries would try and take over the world. How "fair" it was paled in comparison to national security. | [
"The Soviet Union and Chinese Communist forces also held trials of Japanese war criminals. The Khabarovsk War Crime Trials held by the Soviets tried and found guilty some members of Japan's bacteriological and chemical warfare unit, also known as Unit 731. However, those who surrendered to the Americans were never ... |
How were former Nazis treated differently in East Germany, West Germany, and Austria? | This is my take on West and East Germany with regards to your question, hope it helps.
The attitudes adopted to former-Nazis in the direct post-war period was linked to the policy of 'Denazification'. This policy was pursued by the Allies of World War 2 to root out Nazi influence in Germany society, such as removing former-Nazis from positions of power or the disbanding of whole Nazi organizations. However, how they were specifically treated varied between each of the occupying Allied zones of influence in Germany. The British zone, for instance, was lenient with former-Nazis in several cases. This being reflective of the British want to reconstruct German economic power. There have also been cases in the immediate post-war period of the Allies in general disregarding Nazi affiliation. For instance during the subsequent recruitment of German scientists after World War 2, this was done due to their scientific expertise (especially in rocketry) being seen as incredibly valuable (see: Operation Paperclip for the American side of this). To be fair there was a genuine attempt to purge Nazis from society, the sheer number of former-Nazis and their importance to the running of the post-war state (many were in the bureaucracy) meant that prosecution was impractical on such a large scale. As a result, many former-Nazis in West Germany were able to retain their jobs due to necessity. Culturally speaking however, in West Germany there was an acknowledgement of the Nazi past and attempts to come to terms with it, with later generations receiving in-depth schooling in the atrocities performed by the Nazi regime. However, as argued in 'Coping with the Nazi Past: West German Debates on Nazism and Generational Conflict' well into the late 1960's many West-German opinion polls found that respondents believed that National Socialism was basically a good idea that was implemented poorly. Similar opinion polls are unavailable for East Germany at the time but it's argued that the opinion was roughly the same. As a result from the cultural perspective, Nazis were not as demonized in the decades following the war by the German public (and this certainly affected how they were treated on a personal level) and that this demonetization would occur in later decades.
Prior to its formation of East Germany Denazification was pursued within the Soviet zone, with the NKVD establishing 'special camps' for internment with estimates suggesting up to over 100,000 for detainees. With its formation East Germany renounced ties to its Nazi past and instead claimed itself as a successful resister to the Nazis (unlike its West Germany counter-part it claimed). This can be seen extensively in East Germany with such examples including the naming of the Berlin Wall officially as the Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart (implying that West Germany was not fully Denazified). A myth of the East German state is that Nazis were completely barred from society and that East Germany was free of their influence, this is untrue. In 'Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in Two Germanys' (Jeffrey Herf) it is shown that as early as 1958 the Investigating Committee of Free Jurists published a report that detailed that 29 former-NDSAP members were part of the East German Parliament and that Nazis still held important positions including those in health, water supply and machine construction. So in a purely economic way both in West and East Germany former-Nazis were able to retain high and low(er) positions in government and society in the post-war period.
Wierskalla, Sven (2007). Die Vereinigung der Verfolgten des Naziregimes (VNN) in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone und in Berlin 1945 bis 1948
Kattago, Siobhan (2001). Ambiguous Memory: The Nazi past and German National Identity | [
"BULLET::::- Germany and Austria after World War II when many former enthusiastic members of the Nazi Party embraced the newly created nations of West Germany or East Germany and sought to erase or at least minimize their former role as Nazis. During the decades that followed many former Nazis regained prestige and... |
why do we quote actors and their characters they play instead of the writers of the script? | Because most people don't care, it's really as simple as that. Outside of the Oscar's, movie writers get very little attention. | [
"Dialogue can be very important to the film industry, because there are no written words to explain the characters or plot; it all has to be explained through dialogue and imagery. Bollywood and other Indian film industries use separate dialogue writers in addition to the screenplay writers.\n",
"Since there are ... |
How did Mao Zedong manage to stay in power after The Great Leap Forward? | Mao is a controversial topic both in the West and in China, and the reason for this is that it is legitimately kind of difficult to assess his time in power in China. Now, I have written previously on AH about historians' views of Mao, particularly those of the ones I know personally. They don't like Mao and think that, after 1956 or so, he was pretty incompetent to a dangerous degree. This is a view held by even his former colleagues. Actually, for most of this answer I will be relying mainly on *China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed* by Andrew Walder. Anyways, Chen Yun, an official who had been unpopular with Mao for a long time due to his moderate views, said this in 1978:
“Had Chairman Mao died in 1956, there would have been no doubt that he was a great leader of the Chinese people, a respected, loved and outstanding great man in the proletarian revolutionary movement of the world. Had he died in 1966, his meritorious achievements would have been somewhat tarnished but still very good. Since he actually died in 1976, there is nothing we can do about it.”
This is an interesting quote, if restrained, and reflects a larger view. Deng Xiaoping of course walked back on many of Mao's policies once he took power. The truth is that your statement is a little off. China was not the worst off it had been in living memory. Under Mao, China developed into a better place to live in many ways. For example, the death rate in 1953 was nearly 26 per 1000. By 1976, that had dropped to about 8. Infant mortality, which had been at 175 per 1000 in 1953, dropped to 45 in 1976. Life expectancy rose from 40 years old in 1953 to 64 years old in 1976, which was incredible. All of this was a result of a government that went to great lengths to provide healthcare to the vast majority of people. In addition, the government quite successfully cracked down on the drug trade, organized crime, and sex trade. The GDP increases were also massive under Mao. Agriculture and industry gross output increased by ten times under Mao.
However, the issue was that China's population also rapidly increased during this time, nearly doubling after 1952. This meant that the GDP per capita increase was lower, only around the level of the Philippines during the time. Mao refused to implement fertility control measures because he refused to blame the poor for their own poverty, but it really hurt the country in terms of living conditions.
You say that he was not challenged in the wake of the Great Leap. In fact, he was challenged, most prominently by Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, who were the architects of very successful economic development for China, both during and after the Mao era (in the case of Deng). I write about their challenges elsewhere, and what happened to each of them as a result [here](_URL_0_). Mao's power was actually weakened considerably after the Great Leap, and he sort of "retired" at the point. In fact, the Cultural Revolution was, in part, his move to regain power in the wake of Liu Shaoqi in particular becoming very important. He started the movement in secret and used his carefully-cultivated cult of personality among the Chinese people to remove his enemies. The communist party was extremely popular during the early "honeymoon period" into the mid-1950s, and Mao had wisely capitalized on that.
As for the Nationalists. The Guomindang at that time were mainly consolidating their power in Taiwan, as well as focusing on developing their own economy in Taiwan. During this period, the Guomindang placed Taiwan under martial law, called the White Terror. Despite the horribly oppressive regime (the longest period of martial law in the world), the economic development, first under Yin Chung-yung, and then even more successfully under Li Kwoh-ting, was much wiser and larger than Mao's attempts. Taiwan became the fastest-growing economy in the world eventually, in fact.
Sources:
*China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed* by Andrew Walder
*Mao's Last Revolution* by Roderick MacFarquhar and Michael Schoenhals
"A Bastion Created, A Regime Reformed, An Economy Reengineered, 1949-1970" by Peter Chen-main Wang in *Taiwan, A New History* edited by Murray Rubinstein | [
"Mao Zedong was the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, which took control of China in 1949, until his death in September 1976. During this time, he instituted several reform efforts, the most notable of which were the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. In January 1958, Mao launched the 5-year pl... |
are the numbered designations of armed forces units accurate? ie. were there 100 groups of airborne units before the 101st? or if you're in like, the 473rd battalion of whatever, are there in fact 472 other battalions? | _URL_0_
TL;DR - there's no one system to make sense of them. Some are based on history or tradition, others just happen to be the numbers assigned at the time. Arguably, the military doesn't *want* the numbering to make sense. | [
"Other than the aforementioned Armored, Cavalry, and Infantry, the only official Army division designations are Air Assault (one test division), Airborne, Light (three test divisions in World War II), Motorized (briefly authorized from 1942 to 1943), and Mountain. For lineage purposes, the 101st Airborne Division m... |
is the suns energy limited, or does it generate energy itself? how does it work? | The Sun's energy is limited. It will start running out in approximately 5 billion years.
The Sun is made up of mostly hydrogen. The gravitation forces of the Sun cause the hydrogen to fuse together into helium, releasing a lot of energy in the process. Eventually, the hydrogen will run out. The Sun will keep fusing its contents into heavier and heavier elements (helium fuses into carbon, for example) until it can't do that anymore and will become a white dwarf. | [
"The Sun’s solar energy can also be harnessed for its heat. When the Sun’s energy heats a fluid in a closed system, its pressure and temperature rise. When introduced to a turbine, the fluid expands, turning the turbine and producing electrical power.\n",
"Energy received from the sun by the earth is that of elec... |
why does mouthwash sting my mouth but liquor only burns when you swallow it? | Try rinsing your mouth for a minute with liquor. It will start to burn.
With mouthwash you have alcohol and the mixture of essential oils that kill bacteria, work as an antiseptic, and removes the biofilm that builds on teeth (plaque). The essential oils come from plants likes mint and eucolyptus; giving us menthol and eucolyptal oils. These oils are the listerine in the mouth wash. These oils are very strong, menthol can cause skin irritation if it is left on too long. | [
"Minor and transient side effects of mouthwashes are very common, such as taste disturbance, tooth staining, sensation of a dry mouth, etc. Alcohol-containing mouthwashes may make dry mouth and halitosis worse since it dries out the mouth. Soreness, ulceration and redness may sometimes occur (e.g. aphthous stomatit... |
Hey Italian historians, where should I go? | Everyone's gonna tell you the usual places. Rome, Florence, Venice.
I want to make a pitch for Ravenna, the capital of the Western Roman Empire in its waning days. When Rome "fell", it fell from this city.
The mosaics are stunningly brilliant, especially the ones of Justinian in San Vitale. The double shelled dome nature of the Basilica of San Vitale completely defies photography, and I have never seen any image do it justice. When you stand in the center of that church and spin around, looking at its space, it's breathtaking.
The nearby Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is somber, and its mosaics deep with the bluest blue you'll ever see. And though not the truth, it is a place legendarily associated as the resting area of the emperor valentinian iii.
The Basilica of Sant Apollinaire in Classe is considered the "Pantheon" of wood-roofed Basilicas. Its design and survival place it at one of the important cornerstones of Western architecture.
At the same time, the rechristened Basilica of Sant Apollinare Nuovo also contains mosaics of great mystery, with its damnatio memoriae of Theodoric (the ruler of Italy after the fall of the western empire) as the Byzantine conquerors replaced people and faces in the mosaic of the now lost Laurentian palace of Ravenna curtains, leaving only an occasional hand sticking out of nowhere, a reminder of a people's erasure from history.
Theodoric's Mausoluem, the ONLY surviving piece of ACTUAL gothic architecture, stands out of place in a modern park, but mystifying all the same.
You don't need long in Ravenna. Two days. But it'll stick with you. Here, a quote from a book, one of my favorites, about Ravenna:
*she is a place so lugubrious,
so infinitely still and sad,
full of the autumn wind
and the rumours of silence of the tomb, of the most reverent of all tombs—
the tomb of the empire.*
An excerpt from the 1913 book ”Ravenna: a Study” by Edward Hutton. | [
"\"Modern Italy\" is the official journal of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy. Founded in 1995, the journal’s focus is the history, politics and social, economic and cultural studies of Italy, Italian affairs and the Italian peoples from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. The journal publishes... |
How/why do black holes have electric charge that can
be determined from outside? | You could just as well ask that question about mass, too, since by that logic information about the mass of a black hole can't escape either.
I think people get confused when we talk about the electromagnetic force being communicated by photons. It's not that two faraway charges are attracting or repelling each other by shooting photons back and forth. This description makes some sense on a microscopic scale, but really the virtual particles that mediate a force are more like fluctuations in the thing that's really underlying the force, called a *field*.
A charged black hole gives rise to a certain electromagnetic field, as well as a gravitational field (if you really want to be precise, it changes the electromagnetic and gravitational fields that pervade the Universe). These fields have conserved charges - electric charge in one case, mass in the other. So if a ball of charge falls into a black hole, the electric field that the charge created isn't going to suddenly disappear once it falls through the horizon, because the field knows it has to obey conservation of charge. So the field will stay more or less as it is, continuing to attract and repel charges that come by. | [
"A charged black hole is a black hole that possesses electric charge. Since the electromagnetic repulsion in compressing an electrically charged mass is dramatically greater than the gravitational attraction (by about 40 orders of magnitude), it is not expected that black holes with a significant electric charge wi... |
Why would Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors cause catastrophic damage only 6-8 miles wide? | They're travelling very, very fast. The kinetic energy of Halley's comet, travelling at Earth's orbital speed, for example, is equivalent to 23 million megatons of TNT. That's quite a lot of energy. | [
"An impact by a asteroid on the Earth has historically caused an extinction-level event due to catastrophic damage to the biosphere. There is also the threat from comets entering the inner Solar System. The impact speed of a long-period comet would likely be several times greater than that of a near-Earth asteroid,... |
Should I read "The Gallic Wars" by Julius Caesar, or read a modern book about the topic instead? | You can sort-of compromise by reading [the Landmark edition](_URL_0_)
This includes maps etc. which might help you follow the action.
They also published a [bunch of appendices/annexes/essays online](_URL_1_) (previous books just included these in the print version, but by making them online a side-effect is they're free)
If you go with the secondary source option, I'd consider [Caesar, by Adrian Goldsworthy](_URL_2_) (haven't actually read it, but have read lots of others by him and they're great, and reviews of it draw attention to the Gallic Wars analysis being great as the writer is a military historian | [
"Commentāriī dē Bellō Gallicō (), also Bellum Gallicum (), is Julius Caesar's firsthand account of the Gallic Wars, written as a third-person narrative. In it Caesar describes the battles and intrigues that took place in the nine years he spent fighting the Germanic peoples and Celtic peoples in Gaul that opposed R... |
Why are there so many French terms in diplomacy? | It has to do with the reverence the world had for the French language in the 18th and 19th century, during the development of global diplomacy. Was it linked to French power before the Franco-Prussian war? Sure was, but there was also a major cult of the language itself, deemed to be the most beautiful language, the best for poetry and oratory. It has to do, when we talk about diplomacy, with the need for an international language but also with the fact that French is a language that is very elitist, it's very easy to tell those that use it properly, the highly educated people able to use the several verbal modes and expressions. This created an interesting phenomenon, with people around the world studying French deeply. Diplomats were, and still are, highly educated and usually connected to local aristocrats. Being Brazilian, I can tell you that all major Brazilian diplomatic figures (Rio Branco and Nabuco, for example) had a weird fascination for France and the French language. Besides that, all the king's courts around the world tried to emulate the French court and its golden age (Louis XIV). Many nobles in the 18th and 19th century spoke fluent French, with cases of Russian nobles that didn't even speak Russian. Portugal and Brazil had the same thing, also serving as a way to communicate in secret in front of the servants. Today, this has changed a lot, with English replacing French as the international language, including in diplomacy. The U.N. primary language is English. The E.U. primary language is English as well. French isn't going down without a fight, though. Many French institutions are lobbying to keep it as the main language in international affairs, but not as many people speak it nowadays, making it a hard task.
I can't speak for other countries, but to become a diplomat in Brazil you have to take a test in Portuguese, English, French and Spanish. Until the 1970's French was the most important test after Portuguese, but lately English has taken that place.
A good exercise is to imagine business and the United States; words like 'networking', 'bill of landing' 'invoice' are used everyday in Brazil, China, Iraq and Zambia. One can argue, though, that English lacks the reverence that French had. French, Spanish and Portuguese speakers tend to think the English language is a poor language when compared to Latin languages. Of course this is not true, most people won't read Shakespeare or Joyce but will watch Friends and listen to One Direction. I see this in Brazil all the time: English lyrics sucks! Well, if you compare Britney Spears to Vinicius de Moraes you're bound to be disappointed with the English language.
Many sources will back what I said, I don't know if there is an historic document that could be cited. Joaquim Nabuco's 'Minha Formação' (Nabuco was an important Brazilian diplomat in the late 1800's) is useful to understand how diplomats of that era perceived the French language as one of the greatest achievements of mankind (before Russian literature began it's international rise, French literature was deemed superior in every sense). About Russian courts, Wikipedia is helpful: ''From the 17th to the 19th centuries, France was the leading power of Europe; thanks to this, together with the influence of the Enlightenment, French was the lingua franca of educated Europe, especially with regards to the arts, literature, and diplomacy; monarchs like Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine the Great of Russia could both not just speak and write in French, but in most excellent French. The Russian, German and Scandinavian Courts spoke French as their main or official language, regarding their national languages as the language of the peasants.''
| [
"In diplomacy, French is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (and one of the UN Secretariat's only two working languages), one of twenty official and three working languages of the European Union, an official language of NATO, the International Olympic Committee, the Council of Europe, the Organ... |
What is the biochemistry behind things like breasts ceasing growth at a certain size? | I've only worked on signalling and development a little bit but most regulation has to do with different epigenetic changes as the result of some sort of external signal. For example [human growth hormone](_URL_0_) which is already used as a pharmaceutical.
Also a lot of development is not just dependent on a specific molecule but rather concentration gradients of the molecule in certain locations. This means you can't just take a pill because you don't just need chemical to have chemical x but rather have a gradient of chemical x in a very specific location. | [
"The breasts are principally composed of adipose, glandular, and connective tissues. Because these tissues have hormone receptors, their sizes and volumes fluctuate according to the hormonal changes particular to thelarche (sprouting of breasts), menstruation (egg production), pregnancy (reproduction), lactation (f... |
How often was "The Plank" a mode of punishment during the heyday of Piracy? | "Walking the Plank" is a largely Hollywood invention, as a matter of fact. There is only one mention of the practice from the period, and that is in Francis Grose's [Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue](_URL_0_), which itself was not published until 1785, long after the Golden Age of Piracy.
More common was [keelhauling.](_URL_1_) Originally devised by Dutch sailors, the offender was tied with a weighted line to the ship while it was in motion, and then tossed under the hull where they would be dragged across the keel of the ship, which was covered in sharp barnacles. This could result in serious injuries, including losing limbs and decapitation. | [
"Defoe/Johnson published the statute relating to piracy in the early 18th century in \"A General History of the Pyrates\". The crime was differentiated from wartime privateering in the statute, and defined who was punishable in very specific terms. The prescribed punishment, if convicted, was \"Death without Benefi... |
Did the Americans produce more propaganda in WWI than other countries? If so, why? | I want to begin by saying I am deeply upset about this. I have two shelves of books at home about this very subject, and I love to talk about it, and I could give you an amazing and probably very specific answer if I had a moment to check into everything for you...
...but I am currently writing this comment from a greyhound bus in the middle of a cornfield.
The best I can offer you at present is "probably not, but comparison is difficult." Let's consider some reasons why.
**What is propaganda?**
The first problem is a simple one: how do we define "propaganda" to begin with? The First World War marked the inception of the sort of wide-scale, state-sanctioned public relations efforts that have come to typify what people mean when they say "propaganda" to begin with. Many a time have I heard waggish people claim that a clue to the Nazis' obvious evilness was that they had a literal Ministry of Propaganda which they made no effort to disguise as anything else. That they did, but so did many of the combatant powers in the First World War -- Britain had its War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House, for example, with its key operations beginning in September of 1914, and while its actual activities were kept largely secret its actual existence was another matter. The American Committee on Public Information was perhaps somewhat more euphemistically named, but it was also not a hidden organization.
All of this is useful to know, but do we wish to define "propaganda" as only those works produced by such organizations? What about works produced by ecclesiastic groups? Or academic institutions? Or private industry? It's true that one of the functions of the bureaus and offices that sprang up was to co-ordinate efforts of this sort across a variety of disparate groups, but they neither wished to nor were able to organize absolutely all of it. Also: do we count primarily domestic propaganda? Propaganda produced for allied or neutral parties? Propaganda produced for enemies?
**How long did this all go on?**
The next problem, if we are to discuss comparable output, is that of operational duration. Britain's War Propaganda Bureau, for example, began its work in the first month of the war and published thousands of individual written and visual works over the course of its run, to say nothing of all the speeches and newspaper columns and such. This was not the only such agency operating in Britain -- there were also groups like the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, the National War Aims Committee, the Committee for War Films, Lord Northcliffe's enemy propaganda operations at Crewe House, and so on -- and many of them were to be folded up into the Ministry of Information in 1918. Still, they had the benefit of having had the whole of the war in which to stretch their legs -- and if they were slow to take off, they were also quick to expand. In the case of George Creel's Committee on Public Information in the United States, however, the timeframe is substantially different. The Committee wasn't operational until April of 1917, but it basically exploded out of the gate. Creel's [post-war report](_URL_2_) to the President on the Committee's activities will give you a better idea of just what sort of things they were getting up to.
**Competing Philosophies**
Comparison is also hard when we consider that different countries had different approaches to propaganda production in the first place. Some were content to allow it to remain a private enterprise, more or less; others exerted a great deal of top-down control over everything from newspapers to art to private letters. Would pure numbers give us a meaningful comparison when contrasting the one to the other? Similarly, how would you want to compare propagandas that exhibited different regards for the truth? This may seem like a remarkable thing to ask, given that "propaganda" has more or less become a byword for deceit, but it's especially important to an understanding of the material produced during the First World War.
The initial intention of the American CPI, for example, was to stick to the facts as much as possible -- the Allied cause was so obviously the correct one that no invention would be necessary. The goals and methods of the British agencies were somewhat more fluid, but also no less complex; the famous example of the infamous "corpse factory" accusations against the German Army stands as testament to this in that it was insisted upon by a variety of credulous public figures, initially opposed by the propaganda agencies (who found it insane and likely to bring them ridicule), and then eventually filtered into the public consciousness through a variety of official and unofficial channels.
Consider as well something like the famous [1915 Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages](_URL_1_) -- a document that was prepared in good faith at the time, subsequently denounced by a variety of leading intellectuals as a tissue of fabrications, and which has only recently been discovered again to have been thoroughly correct in its conclusions. It was absolutely propaganda -- but do you want to rank it and things like it as being on the same plane as claims that a legion of celestial longbowmen showed up to protect the BEF during the Retreat from Mons?
**Records**
Record-keeping difficulties abound. A considerable amount of what we know about German propaganda policy and even war aims comes to us at quite a remove; the post-war period saw an official program of what John Röhl has called ["patriotic self-censorship"](_URL_0_), in which a vast amount of official war records were deliberately misfiled or even destroyed in order to muddy the question of the German war effort and prevent outside parties from discovering anything that might prove uncomfortable for Germany. Much of what we now know about these subjects comes from records that only became available to us because of the collapse of the Soviet Union -- they had been captured by Soviet soldiers during the Second World War and taken back to Russia for inspection.
Other problems are more benign, if no less frustrating; the records of the War Propaganda Bureau and other such offices in Britain were actually preserved with every eye towards posterity and eventual publication, but one of the warehouses containing them was destroyed during the Blitz and a considerable amount of such material is now permanently gone (the BBC lost a priceless treasure trove of early recordings in the same way). Some archives, like those about the Ottomans that are preserved in Turkey, still have yet to be substantially examined by scholars, so we really can't say just yet what sort of scope we'd discover for this kind of thing. Any answer to your question would be, by necessity, incomplete.
So, I want to close by apologizing for this possibly very unsatisfying comment. I reiterate that the answer is "probably not," but I would qualify that by saying that the propaganda they *did* produce was done with a zeal and zest that could scarcely find an equivalent on the face of the earth, at the time. The centrality of the CPI's efforts to the development of public relations as coherent field should give some evidence of that; see George Creel's *How We Advertised America* (1920), Harold Lasswell's *Propaganda Technique in the World War* (1927) and Edward Bernays' *Propaganda* (1928) for more on that subject. I really wish I could have given you a better answer, but this is the best I can do off the top of my head and without any of my stuff at hand. | [
"During World War II, the United States officially had no propaganda, but the Roosevelt government used means to circumvent this official line. One such propaganda tool was the publicly owned but government-funded Writers' War Board (WWB). The activities of the WWB were so extensive that it has been called the \"gr... |
what is a trust? | Think of a trust as an invisible, perfectly obedient person. You can give this person your stuff, then tell it what to do with it.
You're thinking: "Why would I do that?"
Well, consider what happens when you die. When you die all your stuff and money suddenly needs to be sorted out, including debts, inheritances, etc. This means things like probate often have to happen. In some states it's even required that property spend a month or so in probate after a person's death. It also often means lots of fights between surviving relatives as they try to figure out who gets what.
But what if InvisibleTrustMan has all your stuff? When you die he *still* has your stuff and continues to do whatever you told him to do with it. InvisibleTrustMan will even do things you told him to do when you die, like make sure your no-good loser grandson gets nothing unless he stays clean for at least a year.
That's the ELI5 version. Trusts are *incredibly* flexible and essential for wealth management. There are days worth of seminars and trainings you could participate in and still not have a complete understanding.
You should talk to an attorney and an accountant to figure out what trusts are relevant to your own situation.
| [
"A trust or corporate trust is a large grouping of business interests with significant market power, which may be embodied as a corporation or as a group of corporations that cooperate with one another in various ways. These ways can include constituting a trade association, owning stock in one another, constitutin... |
why do pills come in different forms? (ie. capsules, tablets, etc...) | It has to do with the form of the drug, and how it should be released over what period of time. Some drugs are put into capsules to delay the release, some are put into capsules to disguise taste, and some are put in capsules to prevent it from reacting to early. Others are left in tablet form because they have none of those concerns, or need to be chewed or dissolved. It is all based in what makes the drug work best and safest. | [
"A pill was originally defined as a small, round, solid pharmaceutical oral dosage form of medication. The oldest known pills were made of the zinc carbonates hydrozincite and smithsonite. The pills were used for sore eyes, and were found aboard a Roman ship Relitto del Pozzino which wrecked in 140 BC. Today, pills... |
Why did Clement V specifically pick Avignon as the Catholic seat during papal exile in the 14th century? | Technically, the Avignon popes resided first in Carpentras, northeast of Avignon, which was the capital of the papal territory known as the Comtat Venaissin and had been ever since it was given to the papacy by Philip III in 1274. Avignon proper was independent of the Comtat, but it was owned by the Angevin counts of Provence, who were allies of the pope and welcomed Clement V in 1309 as he sought a haven from the chaos of Rome (the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran had just been destroyed, and tensions were very high), a move which was suggested to him by Philip IV. Avignon was later purchased outright by Clement VI in 1348 from Joanna I of Naples. | [
"Between 1305 and 1309, Clement V moved from Bordeaux to Poitiers to Toulouse before taking up residence as a guest in the Dominican monastery of Avignon (at the time, a fief of Naples, and part of the \"Comtat Venaissin\", a territory directly subject to the Holy See since 1228). Clement V's decision to relocate t... |
If the North Korean rocket is orbiting the Earth, why is it's presumed range as an ICBM limited to the West coast of the US? | I'm guessing it's because a payload containing whatever crude nuclear weapon they would able to deliver would likely have a much greater mass than the ~100 kg [Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3](_URL_0_) "weather" satellite they launched, limiting the range of their [Unha 3 rocket](_URL_1_) to a suborbital flight. Rockets only have a certain amount of delta-V and it takes a lot of energy per kilogram of mass to achieve low Earth orbit velocities, so even a small increase in the payload would have large consequences in lift capability. | [
"North Korea stated that the missile reached an altitude of around 4,475 km and traveled some 950 km downrange with a flight time of 53 minutes. Based on its trajectory and distance, the missile would have a range of more than 13,000 km (8,100 miles) – more than enough to reach Washington D.C. and the rest of the U... |
During the American revolutionary war, how were the civilian loyalists treated by the patriots? | They were generally treated very poorly. Many had property confiscated or destroyed, were tarred and feathered, and some were stripped naked and paraded through the streets (including women and children). It's pretty messed up, all in the name of patriotism. That's why so many fled from the colonies during the war. In the treaty of Paris, one condition was that Loyalists could return to the new little country if they wanted and weren't to be harrassed anymore, but I don't know how well that worked out. | [
"Loyalists were American colonists who stayed loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolutionary War, often called Tories, Royalists, or King's Men at the time. They were opposed by the \"Patriots\", who supported the revolution, and called them \"persons inimical to the liberties of America\". Prominent ... |
how can i feel like i'm going to pass out, but as soon as i lay down to sleep i feel wide awake? | Not being able to "turn off" your thoughts can be brought on by stress. Try to let go of the things you are thinking about, either with the help of some visualizations, or physically writing things down as a way to remind yourself that you're setting that thought aside for now. Or google "yoga relaxation poses" for some postures that can help bring your heart rate down if you've been active right up until bedtime. | [
"\"“I was in bed and about to fall asleep when I had the distinct impression that “I” was at the ceiling level looking down at my body in the bed. I was very startled and frightened; immediately [afterward] I felt that, I was consciously back in the bed again.”\"\n",
"He said: \"Well I thought that the most dread... |
My family has always told me that you should run the water from the sink for a little bit (around 30 seconds) before using it, especially for drinking. Is there any truth to this? | This is something that can be useful for older houses however is not necessary for newer houses. Older houses may have lead pipes. Running the water will flush out the water that has been sitting in the pipe collecting small amounts of lead. The fresh water running through the pipes will not be exposed to the pipe as long and will have a lower lead content. You should check your pipes. If it is an older house and you have lead pipes there are other measures that may be worthwhile to limit your exposure to lead. I am making the assumption that your government has banned the use of lead pipes (therefore only older houses will have them). I expect most developed nations will have by now.
Personally, I still run the water for a few seconds while I wait for cooler water from the pipes in the ground. | [
"BULLET::::- Mul-hang (): In the old days, water was used as a drinking water in the creek and village wells, so a pot was needed to store water in each house. I used to stand on the side of the kitchen or to dig a part of the cooktop and use it.\n",
"BULLET::::- Only way to ensure that your water is clean is by ... |
exif data on a dslr. f-stop, shutterspeed and iso. | First think about how a camera works digital or otherwise. There's a light sensitive plate in a dark box that is exposed to light. The light causes an image to be "imprinted" on the plate. So what are our variables here:
F-stop: This is how wide the hole is that allows the light to get into the box and hit the light sensitive plate. The size of this hole helps to determine what is in focus and controls how much light is let in.
Shutter Speed: This is how long the hole is opened. The speed helps to determine if motion is frozen or blurred and, like the f-stop, how much light is let in.
ISO: This is how sensitive the plate being exposed to the light is. With digital this isn't in play but with film it's a huge deal.
So, how do they relate?
Given a scene you're trying to photograph, there's X amount of light coming towards the camera. You have to figure out the optimum combination of f-stop and shutter speed that will create the best exposure (i.e. details in shadows and highlights).
There's a ton more to it than this but I'm trying to keep it ELI5. | [
"The DSC-RX10 II is marketed in July 2015, it boasts a new faster sensor generation (Exmor RS) and the video 4K. The autofocus progresses with 0.9 seconds on a moving object. The maximum shutter speed is 1/32000 seconds, the burst passes 16 i/s.\n",
"The Servo EE Finder added shutter priority automatic exposure t... |
the special/general theory of relativity and antimatter. | Those are entirely different things.
The special theory of relativity is based on the discovery that the speed of light is always constant. We've measured the light from distant stars, nearby lasers, pointed our testing tools in every conceivable direction and speed, and we found that the speed of light is always constant.
So say you stand on a station and I stand on a train moving at half the speed of light. I shine a beam of light forward. The only way to make sure that both me and you measure the same speed of light is if time is moving slower for me on the train. That's what special relativity is: The set of mathematics to describe how time and space work for very fast objects. As an added bonus, the resultant equations give you the famous E=mc^2.
General relativity extends special relativity to explain how acceleration and gravity works. Say you sit in a steel box. You have no way of knowing if the box is sitting still on the surface of the earth, or if it is accelerating at 9.81m/s^2 through space. An accelerating box would cause lightbeams to droop down a bit, so they must also do so in a gravitational field. After some mindnumbing math, Einstein came to the conclusion that what's really going in is that spacetime itself is bending. So the curved lightbeam isn't really curved, it's space itself that's curved. And the way it bends is dictated by the amount of stuff in it. We aren't getting pulled down by a gravitational force like Newton thought, we're actually accelerating up at 9.81m/s^2, which we can do without moving thanks to curved spacetime. Spacetime tells stuff how to move and stuff tells spacetime how to bend.
Antimatter is something out of quantum mechanics. It turns out that every fundamental particle has an evil twin. It's exactly the same, but opposite. Opposite spin, opposite color(quantum mechanical sense of color), opposite charge etc. Mass is a notable exception here, both normal matter and antimatter have positive mass. If you bring a normal particle and its antiparticle together they destroy each other and release energy equal to E=mc^2. | [
"Doubly special relativity (DSR) – also called deformed special relativity or, by some, extra-special relativity – is a modified theory of special relativity in which there is not only an observer-independent maximum velocity (the speed of light), but an observer-independent maximum energy scale and minimum length ... |
Why is do neurons at rest have a negative charge even though they are filled with K+ ions? | The things you're asking are actually technically in the realm of physics, and a physicist I am not. So I'm going to give you the biologist answer which is a bit lazy and perhaps lax with terminology. But here is the gist.
The "negative charge" is more correctly termed a "negative resting potential" and is measured in voltage. This value accounts for the **difference** in electrical potential (technically, the potential energy of a particle in Joules divided by its charge in Coulombs) between inside and outside the cell, rather than some absolute tally of ion charges. There are indeed many potassium ions in cells but there are even more sodium ions in the extracellular space-- there are several ion types that contribute to the resting membrane potential. What we're essentially saying is that, taking into account the charge of all the ions and their concentrations, the "charge" inside of the cell is 70 mV **less** than the "charge" outside.
The myelin sheath acts as an insulator, allowing the charge to "jump" ahead, which is known as saltatory conduction. Because the charge isn't leaking out, depolarization at one node quickly spreads to the next node, effectively "jumping along" the axon at a quicker speed than if the whole thing had to rely on continuous ion influx. | [
"For a neuron at rest, there is a high concentration of sodium and chloride ions in the extracellular fluid compared to the intracellular fluid, while there is a high concentration of potassium ions in the intracellular fluid compared to the extracellular fluid. The difference in concentrations, which causes ions t... |
Has anyone ever proposed a calendar that is based on science or world history instead of religious events? | **Yes.** The French Revolutionary calendar or the *Jacobin Calendar* was an attempt to do such a thing.
The Convention of October 1793 proclaimed the calendar in the spirit of anticlericalism that was sweeping France at the time of the Revolution. The Jacobin or Republican era was proclaimed to have begun on the autumnal equinox of 1792.
The year was divided into 12 months of 30 days each. At the end of the year (with years beginning and ending on the autumnal equinox), there would be five or six days called the *Sans-culottides*, a series of national holidays. Each holiday was dedicated to a different spirit ─ the spirit of Genius, the spirit of Labor, the spirit of Noble Actions, the spirit of Awards, and the spirit of Opinion. The sixth, in leap years, was dedicated to the Revolution and was supposed to be a grand celebration.
The names of the months were changed:
* *Vendémiaire* - something to do with wine/grapes
* *Brumaire* - fog/mist
* *Frimaire* - frost
* *Nivôse* - snow
* *Pluviôse* - rain
* *Ventôse* - wind
* *Germinal* - seed
* *Floréal* - blossom
* *Prairial* - meadow
* *Messidor* - harvest
* *Thermidor* - heat
* *Fructidor* - fruit
Each month's 30 days were divided into 10-day *decades*, and each day had the name of something related to its theme month. In Vendémiaire, for example, each day was named after a food or flower (except each 5th or 10th day, which was named after an animal or tool).
The Jacobin calendar fell out of use in the later Napoleonic period for a variety of reasons, not least of which was that working men liked to have a weekend every seven days, not every 10. | [
"Scholars have speculated that the calendar could be a schoolboy's memory exercise, the text of a popular folk song or a children's song. Another possibility is something designed for the collection of taxes from farmers.\n",
"It cannot be, because such a practice presupposes a long series of astronomical observa... |
why are conservatives on my facebook talking about being on the brink of world war 3? | It's all about fear. Fear is what keeps conservatism going. The fear of losing what you have, the fear of others being able to succeed, fear of anyone who is different.
Scum like Murdoch feed this fear as it makes them money and keeps their puppets in power. | [
"The CNN / Opinion Research poll conducted May 21–23, 2010 noted that the war remained popular with Republicans, with a majority two-thirds of them favoring continuation of the war. 27% of Democrats supported the war, and among independents support has fallen to 40%.\n",
"Support for the war among the American pe... |
with all the technological advancements and economic groth why could baby boomer generation universally afford to own houses and todays generation can't seem to afford anything? | Ten people had a field and produced 15 apples. Everyone got one, the best worker got 2 more and the guy who had the idea of planting apples got three more: 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,3,4.
& nbsp;
Then, they learned how to produce 25 apples in the same field, but changed their economic system and the new distribution is:
½, ½, ½, ½, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 16
Yes, as a society we perform better, and 6/10 people are equal or better than before. But to generate two rich guys and a megabillionaire we decided to destroy the lives of the other 4/10.
And in a democratic election, 6/10 people still agree with the new system. 3 because they are richer, 3 because they hope to be. | [
"It's obvious that the ease with which my generation moved into houses has disappeared... This generation it is extremely hard for them to get into real estate. I've watched all my kids struggling and it's almost true that unless the baby boomer parents use some of their ill-gotten gains to help the next generation... |
Does everyone have the same number of muscle cells? | Not at all. Muscle cells can under go hyperplasia (increased cell number) and dystrophy (ie. muscular dystrophy which can be caused by a loss of muscle cells.
Depending on the use and disuse of the muscle, either of these can occur. Although, in terms of hyperplasia, muscles generally under go hypertrophy (increase in size) as hyperplasia is not easy, and near impossible for the most part. | [
"The muscle cells are the largest cells in the body with a volume thousands of times larger than most other body cells. To support this large volume, the muscle cells are one of the very few in the mammalian body that contain several cell nuclei. Such multinucleated cells are called syncytia. Strength-training incr... |
What causes land to be land, and oceans ocean? Why are some tectonic plates oceanic, and others continental? And why are some plates split roughly half and half? | Short answer, compositional (and thus density) differences. Oceanic crust is almost entirely [basalt](_URL_1_) or the coarser grained (i.e. larger individual mineral crystals) equivalent gabbro with a thin veneer of sediments. Continental crust is much more diverse compositionally, but if you consider it in bulk it is roughly the composition of [andesite](_URL_3_). Andesite is less dense than basalt and continental crust is also much thicker than oceanic crust.
In general, we can think about the crust of the earth being in [isostatic equilibrium](_URL_2_), with the crust "floating" on the mantle. Floating is in quotes because the mantle is solid, but is able to flow as a ductile solid on long time (10^4 to 10^6 years) timescales. So we have a thick, and more buoyant material (continental crust) and a thinner and more dense material (oceanic crust) all "floating" on a much denser material. This ultimately is the explanation for the difference in the relative heights of the two types of crust.
The compositional differences result from different formation mechanisms. Basalt is simply the result of [partial melting](_URL_4_) of mantle material (e.g. peridotite). Partial melting, as the name implies, just means you have incomplete melting of a material which is possible because rocks are mixtures of different minerals with different melting temperatures. So, if you heat (or change the pressure on) a rock to the point where half of its type of minerals melt, that's partial melting. If you then extract that melt and crystallize it somewhere, you get a new type of rock that is concentrated in minerals with that lower melting point. Ultimately, the formation of continental crust is complicated (and the nuances of it are still debated) but in general, this partial melting phenomena also plays here, where we can form rocks like andesite by partial melting of basalts (which happens in environments like [island arcs](_URL_0_)). So in many ways, the two types of crust reflect different degrees of distillation of mantle material. | [
"The Pacific Plate is the largest known plate on Earth. It is considered an oceanic plate because it is much more dense than a continental plate. That is the reason why oceanic plates always subduct under another plate. There are only a few places where the Pacific Plate is actually above the ocean. Most of the coa... |
What are the differences among cancerous cells in organs other than location and subsequent effect on the organ? | Is what you're asking "what makes one cancer different than another?" I apologize if I misunderstood your question.
Cancer is a broad term. Most of the cells in our body divide and grow in response to cellular signaling. Cell growth and divsion is a complex process that involves replication of DNA, transcription of RNA, and translation of proteins. Fairly often, this growth goes awry, but our cells have multiple "checkpoints" and lots of failsafe measures that are meant to stop this growth and "self-destruct" when needed. DNA replication results in many errors, but due to these many protective mechanisms, these errors are usually fixed or the damaged cell eliminated before the cell even completes its division.
A cell becomes defined as cancerous when some abnormal genetic activity causes unregulated, abnormal cell growth and lack of response to normal apoptotic signals. The so-called "hallmarks of cancer" are evasion of apoptosis, sustained angiogenesis (vessel growth to feed tumor), self-sufficient growth (growth without cell signaling), insensitivity to anti-growth signals, limitless replication potential (lack of telomere shortening and normal senescence), and metastasis (breaking off normal adhesions to travel through body). It usually takes at least two mutations for cancer to occur, and these mutations can occur through various mechanisms: via a spontaneous mutation (DNA replication error or the like), via recombination with viral DNA, via radiation or chemical DNA damage. These mutations must take place in certain kinds of genes for a cancerous effect to occur. Broadly, the mutations can either inactivate tumor suppressors (normal protective genes that work to repair the genome, regulate growth, and suppress abnormal activity) or over-activate proto-oncogenes (genes that cause normal growth and cell division).
The exact nature of the mutation(s), the gene(s) which is/are mutated, the affected cell type, and the organ the cell resides in will determine how the cancer looks and behaves. The rate of mitosis (fast or slow tumor growth?), cellular organization (neat, round tumor or scraggly, diffuse mass of cancerous cells? locally invasive? encapsulated?), change in normal function (some tumors can become "confused" and secrete hormones, even if they are not derived from endocrine cells, in a phenomenon known as paraneoplastic syndrome), and the tendency to metastasize /behavior of the metastasis are often different in different types of cancers. Because different treatments often target different specific molecular mechanisms, the response to various chemotherapeutic agents differs.
Concretely, there are a certain number of microscopic cell changes which we can use to characterize a cancer. Looking at the nuclear morphology, we can count the mitotic index, which shows the amount of mitotic activity. We can look at the cell sizes and nuclear sizes and see how varied they are. We can see abnormalities in the nucleus: too large (karyomegaly), too dark (hyperchromasia), too many (multinucleation), etc. We can see de-differentiation, where mature cells revert to a more immature state. | [
"The pattern of branching and the rate of cell proliferation can contribute to the shape of different organs. As such, the use of the glial-cell-line neutotrophic factor (GDNF) has been found to contribute to uterine tissues.\n",
"The content of the cell, inside the cell membrane, is composed of numerous membrane... |
how can a few tiny crystals of fentanyl can be fatal | To answer your question we'd need a more specific measurement, ideally in micrograms.
But that may be part of the answer you are looking for. Fentayl is an extremely potent narcotic. It has an effective dose at 1000 times lower doses than other narcotics. Similarly, a lethal dose of Fentanyl can be quite small.
Fentanyl is not taking by mouth. Are talking about injecting or snorting?
A 10mg IV dose of Morphine is not uncommon for people in pain, but would be fatal if it were 30mg IV Fentanyl. | [
"The fentanyl patch is one of a small number of medications that may be especially harmful, and in some cases fatal, with just one dose, if used by someone other than the person for whom the medication was prescribed. Unused fentanyl patches should be kept in a secure location that is out of children's sight and re... |
Can any historians recommend a book about Central American history, with coverage of political and business, in a professional neutral viewpoint? | I think there is still no good book out on United Fruit.
Good starting points would be:
*The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898-1934*
*The Banana Wars: A History of United States Military Intervention in Latin America from the Spanish-American War to the Invasion of Panama* | [
"Murdo J. MacLeod is a Scottish historian of Latin America, publishing extensively on the history of colonial-era Central America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic world. His monograph \"Spanish Central America: A Socioeconomic History\" is a major contribution to the field.\n",
"His major monograph, \"Spanish Cen... |
Does dyslexia occur in blind people, for instance when reading braille text? | [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
& #x200B;
Why you can be both blind and dyslexic | [
"Dyslexia also known as reading disabilities creates several possible symptoms. It is assumed, among other things, that auditive, visual and phonological deficits. In simplest terms, these deficiencies lead to difficulties in the task of translating the written language into the spoken language while reading, and, ... |
if google has a market cap 10x that of direct tv why are they having such a hard time laying infrastructure | DirectTV hasn't laid any infrastructure at all. They're entirely focused on providing TV/audio streams by satellite. They only offer internet packages as a middle man, so you'd actually be buying from Verizon or CenturyLink. Well, now it'll all be AT & T, given the merger.
In general though, the issue isn't money, it's legal. The local government may have provided some provider or another with a regional monopoly, effectively prohibiting Google or any new provider from laying the necessary infrastructure.
Edit: To add, Google/Alphabet's primary focus is still its search engine and other online services. Even if its market cap is 10x that of a competing IP, it's probably focusing much less than one tenth of its assets on the new Fiber subsidiary. | [
"While the future development of IPTV probably lies with a number of coexisting architectures and implementations, it is clear that broadcasting of high bandwidth applications such as IPTV is accomplished more efficiently and cost-effectively using satellite and it is predicted that the majority of global IPTV grow... |
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