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How Much Coal did Pre-Dreadnoughts Burn? | An Indiana Class vessel carried 1600 tons of coal and had a range of 5500 miles.
If you want to look up similar data for other battleships the term to google is the ship name + Bunkerage. | [
"Coal was the almost exclusive fuel for the pre-dreadnought period, though navies made the first experiments with oil propulsion in the late 1890s. An extra knot or two of speed could be gained by applying a 'forced draught' to the furnaces, where air was pumped into the furnaces, but this risked damage to the boil... |
why do we like shiny stuff? | I can only speculate, but I'll bet it has something to do with water. A wandering tribe of cavemen would have welcomed the sight of the sun glistening on the surface of a lake. | [
"Glitter is used in cosmetics to make the face and nails shiny or sparkly. Additionally, it is commonly used in arts and crafts to color, accessorise and texture items. The small, brightly colored particles often stick to clothing, skin, and furniture, and can be difficult to remove.\n",
"The term \"Shiny\" was i... |
why is it so easy to fall asleep on crouch unintentionally than to fall asleep in bed intentionally. | Great minds think alike. Ahoy, fellow redditor. Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:
1. [ELI5: Why do you fall asleep much easier on the couch watching TV (or anywhere other than your normal sleeping place) than in your normally used bed? ](_URL_1_) ^(_57 comments_)
1. [ELI5: Why is easy to fall asleep on the couch unintentually, but harder to fall asleep when you move to your bed? ](_URL_2_) ^(_9 comments_)
1. [ELI5: falling asleep on the couch/in a chair - you go to your bedroom to call it a night and then you're wide awake. ](_URL_0_) ^(_11 comments_) | [
"Sleeping in the supine position is believed to make the sleeper more vulnerable to episodes of sleep paralysis because in this sleeping position it is possible for the soft palate to collapse and obstruct the airway. This is a possibility regardless of whether the individual has been diagnosed with sleep apnea or ... |
French invasion of Russia 1812 | Aside from the Walter diary, one of the most harrowing accounts of 1812 is *Sergeant Bourgogne - with Napoleon's Imperial Guard in the Russian campaign and on the retreat from Moscow 1812 - 13* by Adrien Bourgogne who typified the Imperial Guard's hard fighting grumblers. *A Soldier for Napoleon The Campaigns of Lieutenant Joseph Hausmann 7th Bavarian Infantry* by Joseph Hausmann are a series of letters from a Bavarian soldier fighting on the northern front of the French invasion and well worth a look. The relevant chapters on 1812 in *Campaigning for Napoleon: The Diary of a Napoleonic Cavalry Officer 1806 - 1813* by Maurice De Tascher and *In the Legions of Napoleon: The Memoirs of a Polish Officer in Spain and Russia, 1808-1813* by Heinrich von Brandt are well worth examining.
For secondary sources, one of the best books on the the nature of military life is Rory Muir's *Tactics and the Experience of Battle in the Age of Napoleon* which is a readable gem of a book. | [
"The French invasion of Russia, known in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 () and in France as the Russian Campaign (), began on 24 June 1812 when Napoleon's crossed the Neman River in an attempt to engage and defeat the Russian army. Napoleon hoped to compel the Emperor of All Russia, Alexander I, to cease tradi... |
why is there such a strong stigma against romantic/sexual relationships with a large age gap (15 years+ difference)? | I think it’s because it can imply an imbalance of power within the relationship. And because the power may be unequal this might lead to one side being taken advantage of.
The other reason is because with significant age differences there is also the possibility of parent-child dynamic type relationship. | [
"Most psychologists and relationship counselors predict a decline of intimacy and passion over time, replaced by a greater emphasis on companionate love (differing from adolescent companionate love in the caring, committed, and partner-focused qualities). However, couple studies have found no decline in intimacy no... |
Which colonies were net profitable to the colonial power? | It's helpful to disaggregate the parties involved a bit--not by nation or colony, but by *sector*. When the statement "colonialism was a net drain on European powers" is made, it sometimes has an implicit agenda, but it also tends to focus on state revenues. If you look entirely at metropolitan state revenues, few colonies were very profitable, and those that were did not generally remain so.
If you expand it outwards to include private concessionaires, trading companies, shipping lines, and so forth, the picture changes and they look far, far more profitable. The state (colonial or imperial) did not control company outlays or reap their revenues, but only set up the spaces and policies under which they operated. For example, it was evident that British interest in expansion and consolidation in southern Africa was driven by the discovery of minerals, even though almost none of that revenue actually went to the Crown--it went to private companies like De Beers (and Consolidated Gold Fields, also Cecil Rhodes's baby); for them, empire was tremendously, even scandalously profitable. The Congo Free State / Belgian Congo is another example. Leopold II wasn't ruling for Belgium, however he might represent himself as being the state; it was the fiefdom of a private company, his own, and he became quite rich through ruthless, brutal behavior in a temporary market situation (high demand for natural rubber) but made no real investment on the ground and put very little of the money into Belgium's coffers--he "merely" built things. When the Belgians took over, they continued to operate some of the profitable industries, but again through concessionaries like the Union Muniere (imagine the diacriticals there) which were not the same as the revenue of the colony itself. Some of that money might have come back to the Empire or to the individual colony/dominion, as it did with De Beers or the Randlords in South Africa, but usually that didn't count as direct revenue from the colony itself--they were duties, fees, or taxes paid by private entities in some other context. [edit: Yes, these entities often paid for their concessions--but they paid very little, and that wasn't technically colonial revenue unless paid beyond the colony itself.]
The problem with all of this is that it becomes impossible to know exactly how much wealth empire *did* generate, for whom, and where it went. We can get some figures, but other entities are still quite private, or didn't report. Leopold II, for example, famously destroyed a tremendous amount of the paperwork on the Congo Free State. The various East India Companies also made a tremendous amount of money for shareholders, who took their dividends while the companies themselves eventually sank when they couldn't balance their books anymore--leaving the home government to hold the proverbial bag. One could argue that India was always profitable to the British government during the era of the Raj until WWII (so 1858-1942), but a fair bit of money did go back into India itself to support further colonial infrastructure as was the case with most other colonial regions. Few colonial powers expected their possessions to pay in a direct way, which explains why initial administration of overseas territories so often devolved on concessionary companies that were willing to front the capital and see how it might turn out. From working in the British archives, I can tell you that the philosophy of empire on the cheap was alive and well in 19th-century southern Africa, in part because state revenue was so weak. At the same time, one of the world's richest human beings--Rhodes--was busy building his own little Company empire north of the Limpopo with a private army, private diplomats, and the works, all with the blessing of the Crown but little direct engagement. This arrangement wasn't strictly mercantilist by the late 1800s, but it did involve certain limited monopoly concessions, much as still exist for various companies within many independent postcolonial states today. Then, as now, the position of government treasuries tends to obscure the broader picture.
edit: Robert Rotberg's *The Founder* is nice if you want to see how Rhodes himself operated in this web of government and private capital--he held political office in one hand (Prime Minister at the Cape, 1890-1896) while running his private empire in the other. We're still looking for the absolute smoking gun, but his labor policies and trade policies (not to mention his attempt to topple the semi-independent Boer government in Pretoria at the time) show this interplay pretty effectively. The Cape pleaded poverty all the time, but was run by an inordinately wealthy man. Hochschild's *King Leopold's Ghost* may still be the most accessible for the Congo Free State. The era of the companies is in Bown's *Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World 1600-1900*, which is very broad but it may be a helpful starting point. Huw Bowen's *The Business of Empire* is much better for a closer look at the EEIC/BEIC. | [
"Some colonies, such as Virginia, were founded principally as business ventures. England's success at colonizing what would become the United States was due in large part to its use of charter companies. Charter companies were groups of stockholders (usually merchants and wealthy landowners) who sought personal eco... |
dada or dadaism | It is basically a cultural movement that started in Switzerland, Zurich to be precise, during World War One. The people of this movement, the dadaists, used well known art forms like visual art, theatre and literature to express their disregard for the war, they created anti-art (using those known art forms, but questioning them in the process of using them). It was also a way to "ridicule the meaninglessness of the modern world", meaning to push boundaries and question/make fun of everything the society/the state thought to be important, but the dadaists thought to be meaningless (like the war). | [
"Dada is a named influence and reference of various anti-art and political and cultural movements, including the Situationist International and culture jamming groups like the Cacophony Society. Upon breaking up in July 2012, anarchist pop band Chumbawamba issued a statement which compared their own legacy with tha... |
why are some gymnastic/flexibility moves so easy as a kid but really hard as an adult? | Ossification, that is the conversion of the more flexible cartilage with bone, does not end until adulthood (and even then, much of it takes place well into mid adulthood, such as in the skull).
At the same time, ligaments and muscles that keep joint movement in check grow stronger and less permissible of extreme movement.
The latter can somewhat be countered with exercising and training (that is, stuff like yoga), however not entirely... and that's not a bad thing. Gymnastic flexibility is somewhat unhealthy in the long run, as people who have hyper mobile joints are more prone to dislocations and wear and tear of their joints. Many gymnasts retire early due to injuries and overuse.
To put it simply, some of the reduced flexibility helps to stabilize the joint along its strongest axis and protects it from arthritis and dislocations.
Edited slightly after thread restored. | [
"Top rhythmic gymnasts must have many qualities; balance, flexibility, coordination, and strength are some of the most important. They also must possess psychological attributes such as the ability to compete under intense pressure, in which one mistake can cost them the title, and the discipline and work ethic to ... |
difference between terrorists and revolutionary | It's just about how you frame the story. Someone fighting for beliefs that I hold is a good guy. Someone fighting against my beliefs is a bad guy.
The terrorists think they are good guys. They would use positive words to describe themselves.
If you tried to disturb the operations of a lawfully company, I might think you are a bad guy. Certainly the owners of the company would think you a bad guy. They would use negative words to describe you.
Right and wrong do exist, but it is not always clear what is right and what is wrong. Edward Snowdon is a good example | [
"Revolutionary terror (also referred to as revolutionary terrorism, or a reign of terror) refers to the institutionalized application of force to counterrevolutionaries, particularly during the French Revolution from the years 1793 to 1795 (see the Reign of Terror). The term \"Communist terrorism\" has also been us... |
Why didn’t the Nazis or Italian Fascists plunder Vatican City? | Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps! | [
"With the German occupation of Rome in 1943, after the fall of Mussolini, came rumors of a plot to kidnap the Pope; modern scholars are still at odds over the authenticity of such allegations. The Vatican City itself was never occupied; in fact, the chief concern within the Vatican was the potential for lawlessness... |
how does duty free in the airport work? | Generally it is cheaper as since it's for export only there isn't any state/local taxes on it.
Also if flying now and you want booze, you need to get it after the security check point which means about the only place you can get some to go home with is at the Duty Free. | [
"Air Passenger Duty (APD) is an excise duty which is charged on the carriage of passengers flying from a United Kingdom or Isle of Man airport on an aircraft that has an authorised take-off weight of more than 5.7 tonnes or more than twenty seats for passengers. The duty is not payable by inbound international pass... |
Who was Artemisia and why did she side with Xerces? | Well, the most basic answer is that Artemisia was the Tyrant-regent of Halicarnassus, and she sided with Xerxes because she was a Persian subject and his subordinate. She gets a lot of attention because she was semi-unique as a prominent female naval commander (though interestingly enough, another Artemisia from the family of the Tyrant of Halicarnassus was also a naval commander 130 years later). She's also notable because she received a lot of praise and good press from Herodotus in his *Histories*. This is partly due to the fact that they were from the same city and possibly distant relative, and partly because she was a Greek in close proximity to the Persian king and thus an excellent story-telling device for Herodotus' style. Herodotus, like most ancient historians, added dialogue, speeches, and actions he couldn't possibly have known about to move the narrative, make a moral message, or make the Greeks more important to Persian history, but he very rarely seems to have just made up actual people.Despite being notable and relatively well known even today, Artemisia's mere presence on the Persian side is not at all remarkable.
Halicarnassus had hegemony over the nearby islands of Kos, Nisyros and Kalymnos, and was the pre-eminent city in the region of Caria, roughly the southwest corner of modern Turkey. Caria was home to several Greek cities that had been founded sometime between 1200-800 BCE, which all spoke the Doric dialect of Greek. Following the coastline north, toward the Hellespont, there were many more Greek cities founded in the same time frame, which spoke the Ionian and Aeolic dialects of Greek. These were cities like Miletus, Ephesus, and Smyrna. Around 540 BCE, the Persians, under Cyrus the Great, conquered these cities and brought them into the Persian Empire. Many of them tried to secede from the Empire during the Ionian Revolt of the 490s, but the Revolt failed and Persian rule was re-established.
The Persians ruled the city through a Greek system called "tyrannies." That word didn't have the negative context that it has in modern English for the Greeks. A tyrant (Greek: Tyrannos) was just a Greek autocratic ruler who didn't have any traditional legal rights to their power. In the 8th-6th centuries BCE, these became very common in Greek city-states, and the Persians propped up tyrants of their choosing in their Greek cities. The tyrants reported to the governor (satrap) of the province of Lydia, who in turn reported to the king.
Artemisia's father Lygdamis was the Tyrant of Halicarnassus. When Lygdamis died, his son Pisindelis was still a minor, so Artemisia ruled in the meanwhile. As subjects of the Persian Empire, Halicarnassus and like all Persian subject cities, furnished troops and ships when Xerxes called on them to wage a war against the European Greek cities on the mainland. Evidently, Artemisia was fiercely independent Greek woman and intelligent strategist because she led her fleet herself rather than sending one of her subordinates.
While some other Greeks switched sides and betrayed the Persians, Artemisia had no desire to do this. In general, the Tyrants of the Persian-Greek cities were not very popular and relied on their relationship to the Persians to maintain their positions of power. For Artemisia, this was doubly true because she derived all of her power from being the sister and daughter of official Tyrants and could not truly seize power in her own right.
Major Secondary Sources:
* [Encyclopaedia Iranica](_URL_2_)
* [*From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire*](_URL_0_), by Pierre Briant, trans. Peter T.
Daniels
* [*Creators, Conquerors, and Citizens: A History of Ancient Greece*](_URL_1_) by Robin Waterfield | [
"Artemisia is known for commanding a fleet and played a role in the military-political affairs of the Aegean after the decline in the Athenian naval superiority. The island republic of Rhodes objected to the fact that a woman was ruling Caria. Rhodes sent a fleet against Artemisia without knowing that her deceased ... |
why does wood have knots? | Wood like 2x4s come from the trunk of a tree. The knots in wood are where branches were when it was a tree
Edit: as to why its harder, i dont know 100% but id bet its got something to do with the grain in the wood changing and possible friction from the expansion of the diameter of the branch itself
| [
"When a tree is very young it is covered with limbs almost, if not entirely, to the ground, but as it grows older some or all of them will eventually die and are either broken off or fall off. Subsequent growth of wood may completely conceal the stubs which will however remain as knots. No matter how smooth and cle... |
Why was the USSR allowed to annex so much of Poland after WW2 into the Belorussian SSR? During independence, did the Poles and Belarussians have any territorial disputes? | To expand a bit on an answer I wrote elsewhere today:
Essentially the reason that the USSR was able to retain the eastern parts of Interwar Poland after 1945 was because the Allies at the Potsdam Conference agreed to recognize the Communist-dominated Provisional Government of National Unity as Poland's legitimate government (the recognition came in return for promises of "free and fair elections", which never happened). That government then signed a border treaty with the USSR in August 1945 that recognized the Soviet annexation, with a few minor border adjustments.
Population movement and mass deaths during the war, plus massive population transfers after, meant that overall there weren't a lot of people left on each respective side of the border who were very interested in changing it.
The big difference between this (and the annexation of Bessarabia from Romania), from, say, the annexation of the Baltic states (which Western countries did not recognize), is that internationally-recognized governments agreed to the border changes by treaty with the USSR (Romania recognized the border changes in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties), despite the lack of options these governments might have had in reality.
The postwar borders were granted a sort of official Europe-wide recognition in the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which included a section on "territorial integrity" of signing states. A major point of detente in the 1970s revolved around recognizing to some degree the borders in Eastern Europe as they had been drawn post-1945 (Willy Brandt's "Ostpolitik" in this period had also emphasized this).
Interestingly, with the fall of communism, not only did Poland not re-enter into border disputes with its Eastern neighbors, but under Foreign Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski (1989-1993) it worked to develop warm relations with Ukraine and Belarus before they even became independent under what was known as a "two-track policy".
Poland signed a state-to-state "declaration" with the Ukrainian SSR in October 1990 on Skubiszewski's visit to Kiev, confirming support for the current borders (among other things, such as mutual protection for national minorities), and a similar declaration was signed the same month on Skubiszewski's visit to the Belorussian SSR. Somewhat confusingly, the Belorussians did not want their statement to confirm inviolability of the borders - they argued that the Belorussian SSR wasn't a signatory to the USSR-Poland treaty and therefore could not do so (with the Soviet Socialist Republics declaring sovereignty in 1990 and establishing their own foreign policies, it became a little confusing to determine just who was in charge). The Polish minority in the Belorussian SSR was also larger in absolute terms and in relative terms than the Polish minority in Ukraine, and this was an area of top concern for the Polish government - treatment of the minority and establishment of better trade relations were in any case a higher priority than adjusting the borders. The Polish government was also generally supportive of non-communist independence movements at the time, such as Rukh in Ukraine. Indeed, the most difficult dispute with a former Soviet Socialist Republic was actually with Lithuania, which wanted a formal apology from Poland for "occupying" Vilnius in 1920.
One major reason that Krzysztof Skubiszewski pursued this "two-track" policy with the SSRs even before the USSR dissolved, concerned with mutual respect for national minority rights, but also for not adjusting the postwar borders, was because it was facing the exact same issues with a reunited Germany in its West. Any calls for territorial adjustments in the East would call into question the 1990 Agreement by which Germany gave up East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia, in return for special rights granted to the remaining German minority in the Opole region. Polish policy therefore sought to respect the borders in the East in the same manner that German reunification agreed to respect the borders in the West.
Sources:
Timothy Snyder. *Reconstruction of Nations* | [
"In September 1939, the Soviet Union, following the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany, occupied eastern Poland after the 1939 invasion of Poland. The former Polish territories referred to as West Belarus were incorporated into the Belarusian SSR, with an exception of the city of Vilnius and its surroundings... |
if we redistributed the world's wealth equally amongst its whole population, how much would everyone have in their bank account? | Well, the total world wealth is about 240 trillion. There are multiple sources that give different values, but this is the newest and they're all roughly 220-240. _URL_0_
There's about 7 billion people in the world
So if we sell everything off and redistribute it, we come to the glorious total of $34,285.
Keep in mind, of course, a bunch of caveats.
Not all wealth is the same; it's wealth, not income. Property or a factory is an ongoing money-maker, while gold/oil/etc sitting in a vault somewhere isn't. A house has utility but isn't income. (Generally speaking, of course.) And so on. So we are strictly looking at cash value.
This is per individual, so it includes children and spouses. A family of four would get a little over $137,000.
And, of course, different areas have different standards of living. 30 grand is going to get you a lot farther in Bogota than it will in Manhattan.
Edit: you know, for a theoretical question, you guys are REALLY hung up on the practicality of this idea. No, I don't know how this would happen in real life because it's impossible. | [
"A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000. The \"three\" richest people in the world possess more financial assets than the lowest 48 nations combined. The combined wealth of... |
Can bacteria survive low temperatures like when frozen into ice-cubes? | Bacteria can survive freezing. We routinely do so in the lab to preserve them over the long term. In those cases, we add some cryo-protectant substances like glycerol, because ice crystals will damage many bacteria, but freezing and thawing is not a reliable way to kill bacterial cells. | [
"Three species of bacteria, \"Carnobacterium pleistocenium\", \"Chryseobacterium greenlandensis\", and \"Herminiimonas glaciei\", have reportedly been revived after surviving for thousands of years frozen in ice.\n",
"Three species of bacteria, \"Carnobacterium pleistocenium\", as well as \"Chryseobacterium green... |
If someone were to take a cattle prod or taser underwater and used it, would it give an electric shock to everything in the area? | Yes, unless the water was pure with no charge transferring electrolytes in it and then it's about as conductive as concrete. Now let's try putting this idea to [good use.](_URL_0_) | [
"The use of electric cattle prods has been debated by many people. Organizations such as PETA contend that the use of cattle prods is as much mentally harmful as it is physically. Most farmers contend that the short shock is minutely felt, and soon forgotten.\n",
"Unlike hotshots, which produce high voltage and c... |
Grandfathers WW2 Royal Naval History, where can I research? | Could you go through exactly what you have? Any information you know about him would also be helpful - any ranks or similar.
Also, the FAQ has a section on finding service records for family members - _URL_0_. That's got some stuff on RN records that should be helpful. | [
"Prior to 1912 responsibility for the management of historical materials was the responsibility of the Admiralty Library later called the Naval Historical Library , its collection transferred to the Naval Historical Branch when it was implemented by First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill during the period h... |
how do species without a brain process information and make decisions? | It doesn't necessarily make a decision.
Consider plants growing towards the light. They produce a hormone called auxin, throughout their bodies. Light falling upon the plant alters the distribution of this hormone, causing it to concentrate in cells that are less impacted by sunlight. The presence of this hormone promotes elongation of cell walls. So the side of a plant stem, for instance, furthest from a lightsource gets longer than the side closest. The result is the plant tilts towards the light source, or "Grows towards the light." This doesn't involve any decision making, but the input of a stimulus: sunlight.
Why this happens in the first place is as a result of natural selection, in that it arose and provides a survival benefit (in this case specifically, getting access to more light instead of growing wastefully in any direction). | [
"Wallis's group has also studied the dynamics of decision making in both humans and monkeys over the period of time over which they are making a particular decision. Using primate neurophysiology and human magnetoencephalography, they measured how brain activity changed as primates and humans were making different ... |
What is stress? | First, the experience of stress and the definition of stress will be different, and I believe that is where part of your question comes from.
> Language in articles/studies seems to suggest that stress is an objective, measurable, condition. Yet individuals discuss stress as a more intangible, metaphorical concept.
In short, it's the difference between clinical and colloquial usage of the term. As with most popular science terms, it has deviated from the clinical meaning quite a bit. People will use the word "stress" to define combinations of psychological and physiological feelings that are quite varied: frustration, depression, anger, anxiety, exhaustion, tense muscles, cramped stomach, lack of energy, excessive energy, etc. The experience is quite different from person to person, but the cause is almost always the same thing: a disruption in the psychological status quo and/or biological homeostasis.
When something in our environment changes, we have 2 possible reactions, as living entities. The first reaction is literally no reaction. If the change has no bearing on our functioning, then there is no need to react to it at any level. The second option is adaptation to the change. This can manifest in many different ways depending on the individual and the source and nature of the change.
One example could be a person working with a co-worker who is threatening their job in some way. Now, if the person has some level of control over the change, they can try to adapt to it. Let's say the co-worker is out-selling the person every month for the last year and the boss is not happy about the difference in performance. The person can change their behavior in some way to become a better salesperson and preserve the status quo. There is stress felt by the person during this period of time because the environment is changing from one of job security to one of job insecurity (and by our social convention, this also equates to insecurity of food, shelter, clothing, social status, etc). This is a threat to the organism and it reacts to remove the threat from its environment, not unlike an animal running away from a predator that just showed up out of nowhere. The stress is good because it motivates action on the part of the organism to ensure its continued survival.
Now, what if that person has no control over the situation? What if the co-worker is related to the boss somehow and just doesn't like the person, and no attempt at appeasing the co-worker or boss seems to work. The stress would continue because the threat is still there and not going away. Think of a small animal trapped in a cage with a big, nasty dog barking at it, just outside the cage. Nowhere to run, no way to escape, but it's not actually being harmed, yet.
Here we have 2 possible actions. The first is to continue trying different strategies to remove the threat. If appeasing the others doesn't work, maybe an appeal to the regional manager, or the executives/owners of the company might. Maybe the person begins a job search and finds a new place to work that offers more security. Any successful strategy relieves the stress by removing the threat.
The other option, if no way of removing the threat is found, is to live with the stress and not act on it. If all avenues are exhausted, no appeals have worked, no other job is to be had, quitting and being jobless is not possible, then the person continues to live with the stress of insecure employment and all that goes with it. They will constantly feel the effects of this stress as long as they are aware of this stress. If months go by and neither your co-worker or boss say anything about being unhappy with the person or their performance, then the threat is viewed as being removed and the stress will abate. This is a continuum though, so it may not happen all at once, or be eliminated completely without further changes to the environment.
Biologically, stress can occur if homeostasis is disrupted, and it's not all that different from psychological/social stress. For instance, if a person needs water, they will feel thirst, a specific form of stress that we give a special name to. If the person can reach potable water, they can drink it and relieve the stress. If they cannot reach potable water, the disruption to homeostasis will continue to grow and their thirst will continue to cause them stress until they drink water (or lack the means to maintain the stress reaction).
How the stress reaction is measured can vary depending on who is studying who. We can measure cortisol levels from baselines and at stress peaks to see a biological difference in the reaction. We can also do self-report studies where people are asked to rate their current stress on a scale of some sort. We can also use blood pressure, heart rate, amount of sleep or many other factors to test stress levels in an organism. Using blood pressure and heart rate would be preferred while studying brief episodes of stress, like being scared at a haunted house. Using cortisol levels might be a better way to study long-term stress, like people who work in jobs with high burn-out rates. How stress is defined in the study is important to know because each researcher will have functional definitions that can vary greatly. So when something says "Stress shrinks the brain by XX%," you have to look at the article and see what kind of stress and how it was defined. Chances are they're talking about long-term stress of a certain degree and not a quick scare.
As for ways of alleviating stress, these mostly take the form of shifting attention from the object of stress to something different. If the stress is not immediately threatening, the stress can be diminished or eliminated for a time. This is why drinking and substance abuse can be tempting for people who deal with chronic stress. Many cause memory impairment that can eliminate the knowledge of the stress, temporarily, with minimal effort. One notable exception is masturbation, however. Orgasms release huge amounts of oxytocin and endorphins, often resulting in a feeling of well-being and contentment, which counteract the negative feelings of stress.
Could there be a drug that eliminates stress? Certainly. THC and alcohol do a pretty good job for most people's stress. The problem is, of course, that ignoring stressors and threats can be life-threatening to a person. Just as having no fear can be dangerous, so can having no stress. Imagine if you felt no thirst when you needed water, or no urgency when a car is about to run you over. The activation of the fight-or-flight response, stress in it's raw form, gives you the ability and motivation to avoid those dangers. Without it, we, as a species, would be dead from apathy, more or less.
Now, blocking the negative consequences of long-term stress, like living in a low SES, in a violent area, or in an abusive home, could be useful. However, the same mechanisms that give you the ability to quickly react to threats are also the ones that damage your body. Increased heart rate, blood pressure, lack of sleep, hyperawareness... in short bursts they're helpful. When they're constant, for months or years on end, they're risk factors for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. That's why most research and self-help literature focuses on helping people deal with long-term stress, to accept the stressor and/or to eliminate their response to it. Blocking all stress would be a disaster, but allowing all stress to run rampant is equally as bad. As with most things in life, a healthy middle ground is best. | [
"Stress, either physiological or biological, is an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition. Stress is the body's method of reacting to a condition such as a threat, challenge or physical and psychological barrier. Stimuli that alter an organism's environment are responded to by multiple... |
Why does a can of Coke sink, but a can of Diet Coke floats when placed in water? | In a regular (not diet) 12 oz can of soda there is close to 10 tsp of sugar. A can of coke (Sugar water, plus aluminum can, plus sealed in gases) has a higher density than the surrounding water, and sinks. | [
"A number of cans had problems: the pop-up mechanism malfunctioned, jamming, or a faulty seal released some of the chlorinated water mixture into the can itself. A widely reported incident involved an 11-year-old boy in Massachusetts drinking the foul-tasting liquid used to replace actual cola. Despite initial fear... |
Why do you get goose bumps just after getting into a hot shower? | [Your body can't immediately distinguish extreme heat and extreme cold, especially with water](_URL_0_) | [
"Goose bumps can be experienced in the presence of flash-cold temperatures, for example being in a cold environment, and the skin being able to re-balance its surface temperature quickly. The stimulus of cold surroundings causes the tiny muscles attached to each hair follicle to contract. This contraction causes th... |
why does applying vinegar stop the pain from a burn? | Chemical, or heat burn? | [
"Acetic acid (vinegar) or a solution of ammonia and water is believed to deactivate the remaining nematocysts and usually provides some pain relief, though some isolated studies suggest that in some individuals vinegar dousing may increase toxin delivery and worsen symptoms. Vinegar has also been claimed to provoke... |
Does water ever really cease to exist? | For physical transformations (boiling, condensation, freezing, etc) water is more or less conserved. For biology, its a bit different: trees drink water and use it for photosynthesis which (if I remember correctly) uses the hydrogen from water to form sugars, and the oxygen is released as oxygen gas for breathing. Respiration is more or less that process in reverse. So trees don't conserve water (they have a net destructive effect on water) while animals generate net water (by cellular respiration.)
edit: and of course it's worth remembering that you can always use electrolysis to separate water into its elemental constituents (hydrogen and oxygen gas), but water is a fairly stable molecule so its energetically expensive to do that. But if what your asking is "is there a law of conservation of water", the answer is no. | [
"There is no life without water. It has been described as the \"universal solvent\" for its ability to dissolve many substances, and as the \"solvent of life\". Water is the only common substance to exist as a solid, liquid, and gas under conditions normal to life on Earth. The Nobel Prize winner Albert Szent-Györg... |
Is your pulse the same throughout your body? | Taking your pulse simply means to feel your artery expand as blood travels through it with each heart beat.
Like the rest of your body, your fingers have arteries that carry blood to them, too. Using the thumb to feel for someone else's pulse is discouraged because sometimes you will better feel the pulse of the artery in your own thumb. However, this would not be misleading if you're taking your own pulse since your pulse is the same everywhere in your body.
You're also correct in that the reason we take our pulse at the common pulse points (wrist - radial artery, foot - dorsalis pedis artery, neck - carotid artery, groin - femoral artery, inner arm - brachial artery, armpit - axillary artery) is that the arteries at those locations are relatively large and close to the skin so they are easier to feel.
| [
"In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the heartbeat by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface of the body, such as at the neck (carotid artery), wrist (radial artery), at the groin (femoral artery), behind the k... |
how does the loose white powder in a kraft easy mac container help the noodles cook faster? | It's food starch that thickens the water, thereby preventing the water from spilling over.
_URL_0_ | [
"BULLET::::- Kitsune – Kitsune udon (Blue and white package). This is a package of dehydrated udon noodles instead of ramen, with a reconstitutable square of tofu. This item has been discontinued in the United States in spite of great demand found online.\n",
"Special copper or aluminum cylinders, with several sm... |
According to the current state of research in dietetics/nutrition, what is healthy to eat? | I have no idea how healthy either of those diets are. Anthropologically, the paleo diet is suspect at best. There's no good evidence that that diet is what our early ancestors ate. Even if it were, we've physically changed since the advent of agriculture.
As for health, the [USDA has guidelines designed for healthy eating](_URL_0_). | [
"When designing diets for the prevention of certain diseases, it is necessary to know the impacts of individual nutrients on the human body. The MIND diet could be improved by future research which investigates the impacts of individual nutrients or foods on neuronal physiology and anatomy. It is also beneficial to... |
Do photons have a mass? If so, if I shine a strong enough light/laser on a 1 Kg object, would that object move thanks to the force generated by the light source? | Photons do not have a mass, but they do carry momentum. Even though you may have learned that momentum p=mv and force F=ma, once you get further in physics you will learn the relativistic (and thus more accurate) expression E^2 =(mc^2 )^2 + (pc)^2, which tells you that when mass m=0, the momentum p=E/c. So light still carries momentum, because it has energy. Further, you will learn that a more general expression is F=dp/dt (force equal the change in momentum per unit time), so that even though light has no mass, it can still impart a force by reflecting off an object and therefore changing its momentum (by conservation of momentum). So the answer to your question is: photons do not have mass, but if you shine a strong laser at an object, the object will accelerate. The photons will reflect off the object and impart momentum to it. | [
"The photon, the particle of light which mediates the electromagnetic force is believed to be massless. The so-called Proca action describes a theory of a massive photon. Classically, it is possible to have a photon which is extremely light but nonetheless has a tiny mass, like the neutrino. These photons would pro... |
what does each d4, d3, d2, and d1 do with my car, and when should i switch to them? to narrow down, regular 4 door car. | On your gear shift?
They're just different gears. I'm assuming your car is automatic and has a standard "Drive" gear.
The gears 1-4 just allow you to tell the car what gear you want it in.
This really doesn't offer too much of an advantage in normal everyday driving. The only time you'd need to manually select gears is going up or down long, steep hills or driving in snow.
| [
"The \"4-4-2\" name (pronounced \"Four-four-two\") derives from the original car's four-barrel carburetor, four-speed manual transmission, and dual exhausts (Some maintain that the '2' indicated positive traction rear differential). It was originally written \"4-4-2\" (with badging showing hyphens between the numer... |
Why do we traditionally use locks with keys for doors but combinations for safes etc? | Honestly, I think it may be better if you posted this to /r/locksmiths of the more active /r/lockpicking . I would expect that in the security-concious modern world mere 'tradition' would not be a reason that the practice has continued. | [
"The mechanism makes it easy to construct locks that can be opened with multiple different keys: \"blank\" discs with a circular hole are used, and only notches shared by the keys are employed in the lock mechanism. This is commonly used for locks of common areas such as garages in apartment houses.\n",
"Electron... |
When was the last time a notable american publicly advocated for the institution of slavery? Did southerners stop bothering to ethically argue for it during reconstruction? | I feel like you might get better results if you rephrased the questions. The 13th Amendment banned slavery, so people who were clamoring for its return were just being nostalgic.
As far as last notable American advocating for slavery, does that include a Lost Cause narrative? I'm sure you can find examples of Strom Thurmond saying slavery was a good thing while stumping for Jim Crow laws. Southern politicians regularly relied on the mythology of the South when running for office after the war and well into the 1960's. It would also have been a prominent theme of any Lost Cause history, including books like *Southern by the Grace of God* by Michael Grissom (published 1989) or Jefferson Davis's history of the war. (edited to remove an anecdotal comment)
If the question is, when after the Civil War did the South give up on slavery and the notion of actually bringing it back, then it's a little trickier. At first they just re instituted slavery via a complex series of laws, generally called the black codes. These were thrown out in 1866 by the Republicans and new laws had to be passed. There is a period of experimenting with different labor systems before sharecropping is settled on.
After that point, black people are voting much more in mass, have moved to new locations, formed communities, and generally became a lot more independent. White politicians shifted into racist diatribes and were grappling with bigger issues like the vote and retaking office from Republicans. Slavery was dead and banned, so they shifted into oppressing their voting and political rights to keep them working for low wages.
Source: Eric Foner's *Resconstruction*, David Blight's *Race and Reunion*. | [
"During the Reconstruction Era, slavery was abolished under the Thirteenth Amendment and African Americans received U.S. citizenship and suffrage rights under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, respectively. However, opposition to freedmen grew within the South as the Ku Klux Klan committed violent acts again... |
What would happen if you were struck by a tic tac traveling ~1% the speed of light? | We can make a pretty good guess, using some simple calculations.
A tic tac weighs ~1g? Something like that. One percent of the speed of light is 3 x 10^6 m/s. (The Lorentz factor here is ~1.00005, so we can ignore relativistic corrections from here on out.) Kinetic energy is E = .5 m v^2 , so for our tic tac,
E = .5 * 0.001 kg * (3*10^6 )^2 = 4.5 x 10^9 J.
So, you'd be hit with around 4.5 billion Joules of energy. According to [this wikipedia page](_URL_2_), that's the average annual energy usage of a refrigerator.
Perhaps more interesting, it's about 500x more than 55 ton airplane at landing speed, or about 1000 kg of TNT being detonated, or 1000x more than a car traveling at highway speeds, or about a tenth of an [Airbus A380](_URL_0_) traveling at cruising speed of 562 knots.
Suffice to say, it wouldn't end well for you.
Edit: According to /u/QuietlyDistressed [here](_URL_1_), a Tic Tac has a mass of .49g. So everything I wrote above can be divided by 2. | [
"\"Within five seconds the rate of speed was terrific; I was riding in a maelstrom of swirling dust, hot cinders, paper and other particles of matter. The whipsaw feeling through a veritable storm of fire became harder every second. I could feel myself getting weaker every second I saw ridicule, contempt, disgrace ... |
Why are insects attracted to the leaves of a tree? | This is a really tough question to answer without some more information. Pictures of the insects would be ideal for a really good answer, but not even knowing where you're located it could really be a whole lot of things.
[bugguide](_URL_0_) is the best insect guide I know of (which pretty much makes it the best there is), so I just searched that site for *Salix* (willow genus), *Salix babylonica* (weeping or globe willow), weeping willow, etc. and there are dozens of results.
There are a whole lot of insects that will attack your tree.
Besides wasps and flies there are also [lace bugs](_URL_5_), [flea beetles](_URL_10_), [aphids](_URL_8_), and even some [moths](_URL_4_) that will all attack the leaves of the weeping willows.
The wasps could be something like [*Trichiosoma triangulum*](_URL_2_), the larvae of which will eat the willow leaves.
But really they're most likely something like [*Pontania sp.*](_URL_1_), which are the willow gall sawflies. The females will lay eggs on or *in* leaves and the developing larvae make the plant grow [galls](_URL_7_) within which the larvae can feed and grow, protected from the elements and predators, etc. -- mostly.
I say mostly because there are [other wasps](_URL_3_) that will come visit the galls and they'll lay their eggs in the galls made by the first wasp. Only this wasp is a parasitoid of the first. A parasitoid is a parasite that always kills its host. In this case, the second wasp larva will arrest the development of the first larva. It will sometimes paralyze it, but not always. In either case the second larva will consume the first one alive instead of feeding off of the plant. Meanwhile the new larva gets to be safe and protected inside the gall that the first one made -- mostly.
There's also something called a hyperparasitoid which will come along and do the same thing to the second wasp.
So whatever the case, the wasps are laying eggs. And their larvae are pretty much the worst nightmares of the insect world.
The flies you're seeing are probably also gall forming insects. The Willow Pinecone Gall Midge is a tiny fly that makes [galls that look like pinecones](_URL_6_) on willows.
But of course there is also a completely different [parasitoid wasp](_URL_9_) that will attack the midges' larvae as well.
And so on and so forth. | [
"Some plants mimic the presence of insect eggs on their leaves, dissuading insect species from laying their eggs there. Because female butterflies are less likely to lay their eggs on plants that already have butterfly eggs, some species of neotropical vines of the genus \"Passiflora\" (Passion flowers) contain phy... |
how does the immune system retain its memory after blood loss (blood donation, blood loss due to injury etc.) | Say I have a factory that makes chairs. I put 100 finished chairs in a warehouse. The warehouse burns down and all the finished chairs are destroyed. But I still have the factory that makes chairs. I still have the blueprints to make new chairs. It'll take me a little bit of time, but as long as I don't go bankrupt, eventually I'll get back to 100 finished chairs.
In the same way, there are special stem cells that live in the bone marrow. Their job is to make new immune cells. Some of those cells go to another organ called the thymus to be "educated." Even if you lose a bunch of immune cells, the cells that make and educate them are still ok. As long as you don't die in the meantime, eventually they will make more.
You can lose a little blood (like when donating) and be fine. You can lose a lot of blood (like from bleeding out) and be fine (if you get medical attention in time.) The real problem is if you have to get a lot of chemotherapy (to fight cancer) and it ends up killing your bone marrow. Then you'll need a bone marrow transplant. It's usually still better than cancer though. | [
"Immunological memory occurs after a primary immune response against the antigen. Immunological memory is thus created by each individual, after a previous initial exposure, to a potentially dangerous agent. The course of secondary immune response is similar to primary immune response. After the memory B cell recog... |
why the water in the shores of the french riviera, like nice, have a more light blueish color more then other coastlines in the mediterranean? | I am not familiar with the region, but I know of several regions that have blue-ish water due to coccolithophores.
_URL_0_ | [
"Lake Michigan has many beaches. The region is often referred to as the \"Third Coast\" of the United States, after those of the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. The sand is often soft and off-white, known as \"singing sands\" because of the squeaking noise (caused by high quartz content) it emits when walked ... |
What are the calenders besides Christian Calender based on? | In the scientific community, especially the paleoanthropology/paleontology/geology/paleoclimate etc fields, they use a system of "years before present" or BP. They established the year 1950 as the "present" to which that refers, so technically 1950 AD would be their "year 0". | [
"CC3 outlines functions for Gregorian and Julian calendar conversions, as well as many other calendars, always calculating in terms of the ordinal day number, which they call the \"fixed date\" or \"rata die\" (RD), assigning the number 1 to the Gregorian calendar epoch. The arithmetic herein, by using the same ord... |
how do bad games get made? | It might be cheaper to finish making a bad game and selling a few copies of it, than to pull the plug on a project and ensure that all money already invested is lost.
Also people may have reasons to not speak up:
Game testers might want to be hired again, so moaning about the game being "bad" might not be a wise thing to do. It might not be their job, even, to point out that the game sucks.
Many people might be hired for a particular project. If the project get canned, they're out of a job. So they won't say anything. Even if they keep a job, they would ave been part of a failed project. Doesn't look good. Managers don't want to b e responsible for failed projects, either.
Last but not least: I wouldn't rely too heavily on the idea that people know what they are doing in general, or that people who have big money related decisions to make understand the product/service they control. | [
"Games have varying support from their publishers for modifications, but often require expensive professional software to make. One such example is \"Homeworld 2\", which requires the program Maya to build new in-game objects. However, there are free versions of Maya and other advanced modeling software available. ... |
What can be said about Russian youth propaganda during the years of Stalin and the rise of communism? | The main goal was to shape a "future communist man", so appropriate values were propagated: labour as intrinsic value for man, self-sacrifice for the community, honesty, work ethics, etc.
Propaganda, both directed at and done by youth offered a model of behaviour and a template of identity for youth. However, there were few that either completely accepted or completely rejected a offered model. Mostly it was modified, sometimes subverted or reconstructed by youth themselves. Youth were after all not only passive recipients of that propaganda. They also participated, created it and actively adopted it.
For this topic I can highly recommend "Stalin's Last Generation" by Juliane Furst. It is an excellent application of cultural theory to the questions of youth in post-war Soviet Union. | [
"Propaganda posters of the 1920s focused on the need to build a new world and way of life after the destruction of the Civil War. While the Bolsheviks were experienced in the use of print media to spread ideas, they recognized that print media could not work to imprint Soviet ideology on the USSR as a whole, since ... |
i have astigmatism and myopia. why are blue things more blurry than other things? | This happens to everyone to some degree, not just people with vision problems. Even cameras and telescopes have it: it's called [chromatic aberration](_URL_0_).
As you may know, the lens in your eye focuses light onto your retina. Lenses work by bending the light waves and an image is in focus when the light rays converge. But different colors of light bend at different angles causing some colors to be focused while others are not. Red light might be focused perfectly while blue (being on the opposite side of the spectrum) is out of focus.
For your eyes, the aberration is more acute. Red light is slightly out of focus and blue light is much more out of focus. | [
"A myopic individual can see clearly out to a certain distance, but everything further becomes blurry. If the extent of the myopia is great enough, even standard reading distances can be affected. Upon routine examination of the eyes, the vast majority of myopic eyes appear structurally identical to nonmyopic eyes.... |
why/how do our bodies "get used" too certain things such as temperatures of a pool and loud concerts | Everything you sense, be it temperature, smell (olfaction), touch, pain etc., is picked up by what's called a sensory receptor, which is often specialised to one type of stimuli.
Some sensory receptors are tonic of nature, while other are phasic.
Phasic is derived from greek *phasis* (phase), meaning that the response (output) from the receptor according to incoming stimuli adapts to changing conditions in a timely manner. Can be quick or can be slower. What you'll find in [this image](_URL_0_) are phasic receptors. The pink graphs are meant to mimic a stimuli that is applied over time and then removed once again. The green graphs are the body's response in a phasic receptor, depending on how quickly the receptor is adapting.
Why would you have a phasic receptor then? Some sensory information is partical to alert us of changes, but we really don't need a constant reminder. The olfactory system adapts very quickly to change: It's nice for us to be able to sense different smells, but in a constant ranking of information processing, I really don't need to keep noticing the smell of the food I am cooking or the fact that my co-worker is sweating a lot today.
Tonic receptors, on the other hand, is derived from *tonos* (stress, tension). These receptors will not adapt at all or adapt very slowly to changes in the sensory environment. See [this image](_URL_1_) in relation to the one of phasic receptors. Here you'll see an applied stimuli as the red curve, while the spikes on the black graph is activity in the receptor. As you'll see, the activity is highest once the stimuli is applied and increasing in size, however, while a bit decreased, the response stays constant while the stimuli application is also constant. No adaptation in comparison to the phasic receptor.
When is a tonic receptor practical for the body then? Say you're in a bad situation for some reason and you're in pain. Perhaps you somehow placed your hand on the stove. You'll feel the pain, but due to you being a bit dense and placing your hand on the stove in the first place, you won't remove it immediately. Had pain receptors been phasic, the painful sensation would cease to exist and you would no longer be alerted that your hand is in danger of being damaged. However, pain receptors are tonic receptors so they'll keep alerting you until you decide it might be a good idea to withdraw your hand.
**Edit:** Due to my morning commute coming up, I did not have time to include explanations of central adaptation (top-down), where a receptor is giving response, but the central nervous system is filtering the information. Fun fact off the top of my head (I can't quite determine the origin of the following. Must've heard it at a lecture): People suffering from ADHD do not have an adequate amount of this central filtering, which actually accounts for a lot of information filtering in the body, and thus, they are absolutely bombarded with information from the peripheral parts of the body, attributing to their abnormal condition. I should probably also add a TL;DR at some point. | [
"Setting up sound reinforcement for live music clubs and dance events often poses unique challenges, because there is such a large variety of venues which are used as clubs, ranging from former warehouses or music theaters to small restaurants or basement pubs with concrete walls. Dance events may be held in huge w... |
Could we synthesize all nutrients we need without living organisms? | The problem with this is that we honestly have no idea as to what requires a human to be completely healthy. We don't even know what each protein's function is in the human body let alone the lipids and sugars all necessary.
Since I do work on proteins, I know personally that it is possible to manually create (without the aid of any plasmid vectors) small peptides with the aid of organic synthesis, but for larger proteins, the use of E.coli as an expression system becomes necessary and useful.
So to answer your question, it just becomes an issue of reaching a size by which manual synthesis is problematic and difficult. The bigger the protein/fat/carbohydrate, the more difficult it is to manually synthesize.
| [
"Organisms, and all other metabolic systems, require some input of nutrients. Typically the rate of uptake of nutrients is dictated by their availability (a nutrient that is not present cannot be absorbed), their concentration and diffusion constants (higher concentrations of quickly-diffusing metabolites are absor... |
How does the ISS maintain orientation when using the Canadarm2? | Canadarm2 engineer here. The ISS temporarily disables the attitude control system when the Canadarm2 is active. This is to prevent the two control systems (ISS attitude and Canadarm2 motion) from interfering with each other and creating unwanted oscillation. In addition, the attitude control system is designed to respond to a particular mass distribution. If the Canadarm2 is moving something large, then the mass distribution is changing dynamically, and the attitude control software has no defined solution for that situation. So, they build a solution for the "before" state and a solution for the "after" state. While the Canadarm2 is moving the payload between these states, the ISS goes Free Drift. After the Canadarm2 is finished with its operation, the ISS attitude control is reestablished and the station recovers its orientation. Due to the large mass of the ISS, the amount of motion while in Free Drift is relatively small; the crews do not notice it. Typically, the ISS attitude is pre-planned to be near equilibrium during these operations so as to minimize motion during Free Drift. | [
"The ISS employs a total of four CMGs, mounted on Z1 truss as primary actuating devices during normal flight mode operation. The objective of the CMG flight control system is to hold the space station at a fixed attitude relative to the surface of the Earth. In addition, it seeks a Torque Equilibrium Attitude (TEA)... |
taiwan | After WW2, there was a communist rebellion, which started a civil war. Eventually the communists gained control of the mainland, while the old government fell back to Taiwan. Neither side has lost yet.
That's pretty much it. | [
"In polls a slim majority of the people of Taiwan call themselves \"Taiwanese\" only with the rest identifying as \"Taiwanese and Chinese\" or \"Chinese\" only. 98% of the people of Taiwan are descendants of immigrants from China since the 1600s, but the inclusion of Taiwan in China, or in the China proper, is stil... |
Why were Nikita Khrushchev and Vyacheslav Molotov not elminiated by Stalin during the great purges or moscow trials? | The size and scale of the Great Purges sometimes obscures some of the subtleties of the Soviet system and the nature of political power under Stalin. While the Purges appeared to outsiders- both at the time and since- to be a case of the Revolution eating its own, the senior Bolsheviks purged tended to come from internal factions within the Soviet system. A number of the "Old Bolsheviks," ie veterans of the pre-1917 political world, survived the Purges. Anastas Mikoyan and Lazar Kaganovich were certainly rather senior members of the Politburo and both survived. Stalin himself played a dynamic role in the course and micromanagement of the purging of senior CPSU members. These dynamic of the Soviet state gave some individuals in Stalin's personal entourage a modicum of security all while fueling the the Purges excesses.
One of the facets of Stalin's dictatorship was that by the early 1930s he had accrued a constellation of hard-nosed administrators and servitors. Stephen Wheatcroft memorably coined the phrase "Team Stalin," to describe these individuals. Some of them had been junior members of the RSDLP and had come to prominence during the Revolution and Civil War, which in turn led them to a position within the nascent Soviet bureaucracy. Both Khrushchev and Molotov fit this mold; both men were what would be termed in the West as "upwardly-mobile" within the Soviet state. This naturally meant these men were drawn into Stalin's orbit. Stalin's political maneuvering after Lenin's death capitalized on his control over the bureaucracy to sideline his other rivals among the senior leadership. Still other members of the Team were Stalin's early political allies like Kaganovich or Kliment Voroshilov. These men not only capitalized on a close personal relationship with Stalin, but were also important allies for Stalin's emerging dictatorship. The aged Mikhail Kalinin, for instance, struck the correct image of a senior peasant elder within the Politburo. Although he was relatively toothless in terms of actual power, only Stalin received more personal petitions from Soviet citizens than Kalinin. The Team had proved essential in implementing both collectivization and the Five Year Plans, as well as attempting to restore something of a Soviet diplomatic presence within Europe. Stalin may have a strong tendency to micromanage, and this was one of the sins Lenin faulted Stalin in his Testament, but a micromanager needs someone to carry out orders.
The problem with this semi-open clique leadership is that it puts those outside the group into an anomalous position. They have less real authority, but still exist within the system. Trotsky's purging and exile often obscures the fact that many of Stalin's political opponents of the 1920s remained within the USSR, often in some form of official capacity after a suitable supplication to Stalin. Both Zinoviev and Kamenev were in neutered political positions until their formal expulsion from the Party in 1932. Stalin himself saw these super-attenuated members of the Party as dead wood and they were ready scapegoats for the failures of the 5YPs and other problems with Stalinist state-building. Both in private and in public, Stalin would rail against the old-style thinking and lack of energy devoted to the Soviet project that characterized these sidelined individuals.
The emergence of the Team as well as a whole generation of young managers from collectivization and the 5YPs created a dangerous nexus that made the Great Purges so destructive. Not only did Stalin fear that his rivals could unite and dethrone him, he also had at his disposal a collection of servitors willing to advance their careers at others' expenses. For the Team, this meant ferreting out real or expected enemies, and they often targeted outsiders. Of the Politburo members purged in 1937, they were relative outliers within the larger Soviet system. they were late-comers to the Politburo and a number of them had been abroad for reasons of health, providing a neat pretext for charges of foreign collusion or connections to Trotsky. Other out-groups were especially vulnerable to the purging process. There was a strong distrust within the early Soviet system of military professionals. Many officers of the first decade of Soviet rule had ascended the ranks semi-independently of the Party, and, by extension, Stalin. These suspicions bore fruit during the Great Purges as military officers found their personal networks within the military provided very little cover against charges of treason and wrecking.
But being on the Team always carried with it an element of risk. Displeasing Stalin or creating some sort of pretext for removal was an ever-present threat during the Purges. Genrikh Yagoda's fall exemplified that no one was immune from the process. Yagoda, as head of the NKVD, was notoriously corrupt and inefficient and enemies within the Team and the NKVD used this against him. His successor, the much younger Nikolai Yezhov, conducted his duties with far greater probity and thoroughness than the venal Yagoda. But although Yezhov was a more efficient executor, that very status painted a target on Yezhov's back. Like many intelligence chiefs, Yezhov actively sought out intelligence on his political rivals. Such files were dangerous in the collective paranoia of the Great Purges as trivial biographical details and missteps could become treason. Stalin's habit of simultaneously delegating and then micromanaging the Team gave Yezhov plenty of evidence on the Teams' activities that could be spun into a charge. Not surprisingly, Yezhov was the most powerful member of the inner circle to be purged. Even here, the purging process was quite different and staged with a gradual stripping of his power before his arrest, show-trial, and execution. A similar fate befell Yezhov's successor Beria after Stalin's death, illustrating the occupational hazards of being Stalin's chief of secret police.
Although underlying causes of the Great Purges are still highly contentious within the historiography, the process of the Purges was relatively straightforward. Much of the initial targets were outliers and men who had lost earlier political battles with Stalin and were thus automatically suspect. But as the Purges escalated, blame-shifting and circular squads began to take over, leading to a wider expansion of arrests and show trials. Stalin proved an important bellwether for the Purge process that encouraged to evolve in certain directions or occasionally putting a stop to it in some areas. The Team had been used to tailoring data to suit Stalin's expectations for the better part of a decade before 1937 and the Great Purges were not an exception to this phenomenon. Yezhov in particular knew how to play to Stalin's instincts and suspicions and it was this that made him especially dangerous to other members of the Team. While other members of the leadership participated in the Purges as a matter of self-preservation, others like Yezhov or Khrushchev used them as an opportunity for career advancement or to settle scores with other rivals. While the Terror certainly disrupted the Soviet leadership, it also created opportunities for advancement and bound certain members of the Team together with their master. By fusing self-preservation and careerism, the Stalinist system of government created a self-perpetuating dynamic that only Stalin could put the breaks upon.
*Sources*
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. *On Stalin's Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics*. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.
Getty, John Arch, Nadežda Vladimirovna Murav'eva, and Oleg Vladimirovič Naumov. *Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin's "Iron Fist"*. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.
Khlevniuk, Oleg. *Master of the House Stalin and the Inner Circle*. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
Wheatcroft, Stephen G. "From Team-Stalin to degenerate tyranny." In *The Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship*, pp. 79-107. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2004. | [
"It featured the same type of frame-up of the defendants and it is traditionally considered one of the key trials of the Great Purge. Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the senior military officers Iona Yakir, Ieronim Uborevich, Robert Eideman, August Kork, Vitovt Putna, Boris Feldman, and Vitaly Primakov were accused of ant... |
What do physicists mean when they say that the extra spatial dimensions are "curled up?" | Think of a telephone cord. From a distance, it looks like one straight line. If you get close enough, you can see that it's actually curled up in three dimensions, and not as you thought before a simple line. | [
"By comparison with , this is a current algebra in two spacetime dimensions, \"including a Schwinger term\", with the space dimension curled up into a circle. In the classical setting of quantum field theory, this is perhaps of little use, but with the advent of string theory where fields live on world sheets of st... |
Were the English soldiers in Braveheart (1995) an accurate depiction of High Middle Age soldiers? | No. Like most things in Braveheart, the armour worn by the English soldiers is complete nonsense.
It isn't 'plate mail'. There are two main sorts of armour which might get called 'plate mail' and it doesn't really look like either of them or any other historical armour.
Plate-over-mail or 'transitional armour' could have been seen in late 13th century Scotland, but it was a full coat of mail with an armoured surcoat or 'coat of plates' and maybe some stuff like spaulders (the arm plates shown on the cavalry in your third image). This differs from the armour shown on the English infantry in many ways; the arm protection would have been articulated hoops, the body plates would have been sewn behind cloth and crucially all the plates would have been overlapping and worn over mail. The gaps in the film armour would have seriously compromised it's ability to stop sharp objects going into the man wearing it, which is kind of the entire point of armour.
The other kind of 'plate mail' would be plates joined together with mail. This would look a bit like the film armour, but instead of being sewn onto a cloth backing the plates would be linked together with metal rings. However, this kind of armour was almost unheard of in Western Europe.
Other kinds of armour which might possibly have 'inspired' the costume designers could be scale and lamellar. Neither of these looked very much like what you see in the film and would not be common in the time and place that it is set.
Actual armour likely to have been worn by English infantry at the time would have been:
A heavy gambeson or padded jack. This is a very thick coat of very tightly woven cloth, quilted together with substantial stitching. It would have been sturdy enough to stand up on it's own and could stop blows from swords, arrows, etc. The outer layer might have been leather or finer cloth.
Mail. This would probably be the most common armour for the time and place. A typical hauberk would cover the entire arms and torso, but not the neck and only the upper thigh. It was worn over a lighter version of the gambeson.
Transitional / plate-over-mail. This was mail with extra stuff on top. The torso was covered by more-or-less flat plates which were riveted or stitched between two layers of cloth or leather. The arms might have spaulders (shoulder guards), vambraces (forearms) and/or couters (elbows).
All of these would have been worn with a helmet. The helmets shown in the film aren't actually that bad, being mostly bascinets and kettle hats which would have been common. They do weirdly seem to have scale aventails protecting the neck rather than mail ones, which would have been standard.
Another notable feature of the English soldiers in the film is that they seem to have some kind of uniform. They all wear orange tabards, either with chevrons or lions on them. At the time, soldiers mostly supplied their own kit and there was no standardisation of appearance (although there were strict rules about what kind of gear you were expected to show up with). It's just about possible that a group of soldiers from the same family or village might choose to colour-coordinate for some reason, the army as a whole would not wear matching colours. | [
"Richard the Lionheart was often recorded in Victorian times wielding a large war axe, though references are sometimes wildly exaggerated as befitted a national hero: \"Long and long after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible battle-axe, with twenty English pounds of English steel in its mighty head...\" - \"A C... |
why can my brain recognise four objects without counting, whereas if there are five objects, i have to split them into a three and a two? | This is called "subitizing" and is actually really cool. Basically, they're two different processes. Counting is a very manual deliberate and conscious process. Subitizing is based on your brain's object tracking systems--how many moving objects you can keep track of at once. Even if the objects aren't moving, your brain is using that same process of "these are things I want to focus on and keep track of".
You can also increase the number of objects you can immediately identify with training. Video games are one good way, but 6 is probably the upper limit | [
"Finally, one has reason to disbelieve that one knows anything by looking at problems in understanding objects by themselves. Things, when taken individually, may appear to be very different from when they are in mass quantities: for instance, the shavings of a goat's horn are white when taken alone, yet the horn i... |
How does methanol damage the optic nerve and cause blindness? | Methanol is metabolized by alcohol dehydrogenase to formaldehyde and formate, the latter of which causes optic neuritis and, subsequently, blindness. Formate is toxic to mitochondria via its inhibition of cytochrome oxidase, as described [here](_URL_0_). This is the same mechanism as with cyanide and carbon monoxide. The result is that cellular respiration fails and the cells die. | [
"The most recognized cause of a toxic optic neuropathy is methanol intoxication. This can be a life-threatening event that normally accidentally occurs when the victim mistook, or substituted, methanol for ethyl alcohol. Blindness can occur with drinking as little as an ounce of methanol, but this can be counteract... |
why do our intestines occasionally decide w/o warning that it’s time to go and you’ve got less than 5 minutes to find a bathroom? | I am assuming you mean diahorrea? The reason why is because something has reached your intestine that shouldn't have, such as somewhat rancid meat or something, so your body wants to get it out as quickly as possible before it can do serious damage, now your body can't just flush out the bad stuff it has to be all or nothing, which is why diahorrea is watery, because water is absorbed in the intestines. The reason why you might need to go multiple times in a short period is because of that all or nothing point, your body won't stop until your empty. | [
"The time taken for food or other ingested objects to transit through the gastrointestinal tract varies depending on many factors, but roughly, it takes less than an hour after a meal for 50% of stomach contents to empty into the intestines while total emptying takes around 2 hours. Subsequently, 50% emptying of th... |
could being electrocuted by a taser damage or stop your heart? if so, how do we mitigate the risks? | Yes, [Reuters ](_URL_0_) did an entire investigation about it. Over 150 people killed by teasers during their investigation. | [
"A Chicago study suggests that use of the Taser can interfere with heart function. A team of scientists and doctors at the Cook County hospital trauma center stunned 6 pigs with two 40-second Taser discharges across the chest. Every animal was left with heart rhythm problems and two of the subjects died of cardiac ... |
What are the parts of the D-Wave quantum computer? | > What are the parts of the D-Wave quantum computer?
~Sigh~
What D-Wave is selling has not been proven to be a quantum computer.
> what general parts are there in a quantum computer?
I have [this saved from when /u/whittlemedownz explained it a while back](_URL_1_) but I'll give me own spin.
A quantum computer has a bunch of individual information storage elements analogous to the bits in a classical computer CPU or memory. The physical incarnation of the bits in a quantum computer must be build so as to exhibit quantum mechanical behavior. As such they are called "quantum bits" or "qubits". There are many possible physical elements that can be used: atoms, electron spins, photon polarization, superconducting circuits, and more. The D-Wave machine uses superconducting circuits. Each one is a loop of superconducting wire. The current in the wire can flow clockwise or counterclockwise. Because it's quantum the qubit can also be in a state that is a superposition of both directions of current. The bits interact with one another via the magnetic dipole of each loop of current: each bit feels its neighbors' magnetic fields.
The computer also has wires that carry signals into the bits to control them in various ways. In the case of D-Wave this is by applying external magnetic flux to the loops. In fact this control circuitry is extremely difficult to get right and in my opinion is the most impressive thing about D-Wave's machine.
> but what exactly am I looking at - some sort of scintillating CPU?
The thing in the center is the chip with the superconducting qubits. The rest of it is control wiring and a cryogenic mount. Look in the dead center. See the rainbow colors in the black square? That's the chip. The rainbow color happens because of diffraction off of the tiny lithographically defined features. Those sets of itty bitty parallel lines at the border of the black chip are [wire bonds](_URL_0_). The wire bonds connect wires on the chip to wires on the green circuit board mount. The circuit board has its own wires (the thin lines in the green board) which fan out and connect to those bundles of what look like braided copper wires (the brownish things with the white labels on them). The gold colored metal just a mounting apparatus. It's probably gold plated oxygen free copper, a commonly used material in cryogenic applications.
Source - I work in a quantum computing lab | [
"On May 11, 2011, D-Wave Systems announced the D-Wave One, an integrated quantum computer system running on a 128-qubit processor. The processor used in the D-Wave One, code-named \"Rainier,\" performs a single mathematical operation, discrete optimization. Rainier uses quantum annealing to solve optimization probl... |
how does infection cause elevated blood glucose in diabetics? | Infection causes a stress response in the body by increasing the amount of certain hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones work against the action of insulin and, as a result, the body's production of glucose increases, which results in high blood sugar levels. | [
"Hypoglycemia, or low blood glucose, causes cardiovascular physiological effects as a result of the sympathoadrenal system. These physiological changes include an increased heart rate, increased heart contractility, and decreased peripheral arterial resistance. Together, the effects increase peripheral blood pressu... |
Considering that North Korean missile tests can reach altitudes well outside the atmosphere, why is their range not theoretically infinite? Once there is no drag, can't the missile go arbitrarily far with a minimal amount of thrust? | Earth's gravity is still present after you've left the atmosphere. It decreases with the square of the distance, but at 2800 km it is still significant: 4.7 m/s^2 (compared to 9.8 on the ground).
The only reason why satellites and the ISS can stay in orbit is because they're constantly moving sideways to "miss" the Earth.
The only way to go up indefinitely with no thrust would be achieving escape speed (11.2 km/s). | [
"However it is unlikely that North Korea uses IRFNA propellants which will reduce its range by about half, after the experts acknowledged that the June 22 twin test range could be at 3,150 km if the missile was not launched in the lofted trajectory.\n",
"Based on the size of the missile, the fuel composition, and... |
Charles Dickens's father spent time in debtors' prison. How did they work? Inmates were charged room and board, already unable to pay their debts; how could one hope to ever get out? Was there a set 'sentence', or were prisoners simply dependent on others paying their way back into society? | I answered a similar question a few months ago; you can see the answer [here](_URL_0_) | [
"A few months after his imprisonment, John Dickens's mother, Elizabeth Dickens, died and bequeathed him £450. On the expectation of this legacy, Dickens was released from prison. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act, Dickens arranged for payment of his creditors, and he and his family left Marshalsea, for the home of Mr... |
how to properly order at starbucks | Don't play their stupid game. I order a large coffee. If they ask me if that's a venti Peak, I give them a nod. I only hit Starbucks if there is nothing else around, their coffee tastes like it's made by filtering hot water through burnt, dried cat turds. | [
"Starbucks maintains control of production processes by communicating with farmers to secure beans, roasting its own beans, and managing distribution to all retail locations. Additionally, Starbucks' Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices require suppliers to inform Starbucks what portion of wholesale prices paid reach... |
bandwidth - how does a satellite send down hundreds of channels of high definition content to televisions all over the country, but my 1mbps in the connection gets bogged down by five smartphones? | Think of broadcasting television channels like a movie theater. Each individual theater can display a movie to to huge numbers of people, only limited by how many seats there are and how bright the screen is. If the screen was bright enough and there were enough seats, everyone on earth could watch a movie off that one screen.
But when it comes to sending and receiving data to and from a single person, it's less like a movie and more like a phone call. That single satellite up in space can only switch back and forth between separate phone calls so quickly before it's overloaded.
So in other words broadcasting is easy. Individual communication is hard. | [
"The StarBand satellite Internet system was a VSAT platform that used K band satellites for transmission of data from users' PCs to the StarBand network operations center. Two-way bandwidth for residential users was up to 1.5 Mbit/s download speed and 256 kbit/s upload speed, with unlimited usage and online hours. ... |
How did families that were separated by war find each other after the war was over? | After WW2, an organization was formed to reunite people. See [here](_URL_0_). Existing documentation was used to try and "connect the dots", and figure out how was alive.
I've also heard (though I can't find a source) of survivors posting notices that they were alive in newspapers and some sort of Red Cross Bulletin, looking for family and friends. | [
"Large numbers of people were displaced as a result of the war, and many families were divided by the reconstituted border. In 2007 it was estimated that around 750,000 people remained separated from immediate family members, and family reunions have long been a diplomatic priority for the South.\n",
"Displaced p... |
What is the problem with String theory not 'making any predictions'? | Science needs to be testable in some way, otherwise you can say whatever you want and there's no way to say whether it is correct or not.
String theory, at the moment, does not really make any predictions, so we can't test it against observations we've made of the Universe to see if it holds up. If it did make a prediction, then someone could design an experiment and we could test it, either showing that it holds up or has been proven false. | [
"Peter Woit, a theoretical physicist, believes that this conflict exists in string theory, where very abstract models may be impossible to test in any foreseeable experiment. If this is the case, the \"string\" must be thought of either as real but untestable, or simply as an illusion or artifact of either mathemat... |
Is it possible to simultaneously get an extra chromosome from one parent and miss out on that chromosome from the other? If so, would the resulting child have any defects? | This is indeed possible, though quite rare. This phenomenon is called [uniparental disomy](_URL_0_), and you can read a bit about it at that link. I would imagine that in some cases there would be no noticeable effects, especially if you received two different versions of the chromosome from one parent (heterodisomy; i.e., you got both your maternal grandfather's and maternal grandmother's chromosome) so that you are not fully homozygous across that chromosome. However, there are some defects associated with uniparental disomy as the above link indicates; both Prader-Willi syndrome and Angelman syndrome can be (but are not always) caused by inheriting two chromosome 15's from the mother or father respectively. | [
"In a normal situation, all the cells in an individual will have 46 chromosomes with one being an X and one a Y or with two Xs. However, sometimes during this complicated early copying process (DNA replication and cell division), one chromosome can be lost. In 45,X/46,XY, most or all of the Y chromosome is lost in ... |
why don't we consider elements other than carbon and silicon as the building block for life. | Because that's not life. That's a nuclear reaction.
Life is where something is living, a fire is not living, a nuclear explosion is not alive.
The reason nothing larger than carbon or silicon are considered is because the arrangements for the elements larger than that, that keep the +/-4 charge are too unstable and have arrangements of valences that don't allow for easy bonding. | [
"The most important characteristics of carbon as a basis for the chemistry of life are, that it has four valence bonds, and that the energy required to make or break a bond is at an appropriate level for building molecules, which are stable and reactive. Carbon atoms bond readily to other carbon atoms; this allows ... |
Why Stalin's collectivisation caused famine and poverty in the USSR? | **I'll provide a breakdown of two events, hopefully these are sufficient and allow for a better understanding of Soviet collectivization across Stalin's regime:**
Collectivization was established during the first five year plan (1928-1932) and the principle is repeated across Soviet history. Beginning with Holodomor the motives and devastation from forced collectivization is introduced and explored.
**Holodomor: Ukraine 1932-1933**
Soviet agriculture was radically altered by the efforts of collectivization across countrysides to counter grain shortages across the Soviet Union. Stalin rushed headfirst into rapidly collectivizing the peasantry, a task he deemed necessary to ensure grain production across the USSR would increase. By 1929 the Communist party decided that, “All Soviet agriculture should be collectivized.”\[1\] This move altered the countryside, as many farms were stripped of the autonomy they once held. The socialization of rural Soviet Union allowed for production to reach an all time high. The peasants did not “voluntarily join the collective farms”\[2\] instead “everything was taken from them; their land, their cattle, their homes.”\[3\] This collective restructure was not seen as successful or necessary for the peasantry, who likened the effort to being a serf. They expressed upset with the government taking their “last few pounds of flour and meat.”\[4\] As the peasants revolted dekulakization was introduced as a means of class warfare. Successful non-collectivized farmers (kulaks) became the enemy and a tactic used to scare individuals into collective work. By 1929 the collective peasantry, who “accounted for 5 percent of the \[overall\] peasantry, accounted for 14 percent of the marketable grain.” \[5\] While the Soviet Union had rectified their falling grain supply they had decimated their rural communities. The collectivization effort had economically paid off, and by March 2, 1930, Stalin had halted the rush into collectivization due to revolts and general unrest in the countryside. Before the call to end collectivization more than “15 million households collectivized.”\[6\] Soviet farms ended up producing excess grain that was then pushed into an already overwhelmed global grain market. As this excess food was offered for sale, many areas were forced to ration food while facing starvation, including the 64 percent of collective households (by the end of 1930) within Ukraine.\[7\]
The 1930s brought the rise Ukraine collectivization. While the majority of the Soviet Union had slowed down in collectivization efforts, energy was diverted into Ukraine. The transition was violent, rapid, and wildly successful.\[8\] The initial Ukrainian response to collectivization was resistant, with several violent cases across the Soviet Socialist Republic. The idea that, “Bolshevism has abolished private life”\[9\] had completely overtaken Ukraine, as 70 percent of households\[10\] were collectivized. The collectivization process had succeeded, and Ukraine’s collectivized farms were producing 27 percent of the Soviet grain harvest.\[11\] This success eventually prompted the government to seize one-third of Ukraine’s harvest, with the eventual demands of half the overall harvest for the Union rather than Ukraine alone.
The simultaneous Soviet Union famines of 1932 and 1933 swept across the USSR in Kazakhstan, Northern Caucasus Ukraine, and other regions who strongly resisted collectivization. As a large agriculture producer, Ukraine seemed unlikely to be hit by a food security issue. While collectivized farms produced grain, they were unable to hold onto food for themselves. A majority of the crop yield went to the government, at the time of harvest in 1932 Ukrainians were unable to produce anything outside of government grain. By this point “Comrades took the last food of starving people,”\[12\] despite Ukraine being the largest producer of grain the population plunged into a state produced famine. Thus, the term Holodomor is born, meaning “to kill by starvation.” Emphasizing the man made nature of this famine. While Ukraine lacked food, there was no ecological factor to this famine, rather it was a move of political power.\[13\]
This event redefined Stalin’s regime, he became a man with the power to kill millions upon choice. The Soviet Union maintains that Ukraine’s famine was not intentional, rather, it was an event that happened within the greater Soviet famines of 1932-1933. While there were multiple famines across the Soviet Union, Ukraine’s food production could have substance the population had the majority of food stayed within the republic. Soviet food production was boosted but at cost to citizens living with these rural communities, “Though collectivization was supposed to end social polarization in the countryside..the village became more stratified than ever.”\[14\] | [
"Stalin resorted to mass murder and wholesale deportation of farmers to Siberia in order to implement the plan. Millions who remained did not die of starvation, but the centuries-old system of farming was destroyed in a region so fertile it was once called \"the breadbasket of Europe\". The immediate effects of for... |
how does making a donation offset your carbon footprint? | Well, you would plant trees. The trees take in CO2 and exhale O2, and the carbon is used to build the structure of the tree. Any plant will do, but trees are the most common. | [
"The Carbonfund.org Foundation (known as Carbonfund.org) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization based in East Aurora, NY that provides carbon offsetting and greenhouse gas reduction options to individuals, businesses, and organizations. Carbonfund.org Foundation purchases and retires certified carbon offsets on... |
how will the proposed wall solve any of america's problems? | Mostly, it will make us feel better, because we've already forgotten about the large fence between our countries that at the least isn't very safe to put a ladder against.
It will make it marginally harder for the 5% of illegal immigrants that cross the border outside of a checkpoint to get into and out of the US. The other 95% cross the border legally, but then stay illegally after their work/vacation visa expires.
See, there are plenty of programs for companies to hire migrant workers on a 3-month work visa, which is more than enough to get someone over the border. They do their work as a legal immigrant for 3 months, then are supposed to head back home.
Or the family of Mexicans that want to spend a nice weekend at Disney World that got "lost" on their way back to the airport. There's really nothing stopping them from simply not going home and hanging around in the US until someone makes them leave.
Hang around long enough and you can apply for legit citizenship. Especially if you can pop out a baby on US soil.
I'm genuinely hoping the wall becomes a metaphor for spending $60bil on Immigration enforcement reform instead of a giant concrete dong along our border. That kind of money could have an Immigration officer following up with every visa, verifying that folks actually left when they said they did.
If we're going to go full-retard on curbing illegal immigrants, it would be nice if we could be smart about it. | [
"We could hardly dream of building a kind of Great Wall of France, which would in any case be far too costly. Instead we have foreseen powerful but flexible means of organizing defense, based on the dual principle of taking full advantage of the terrain and establishing a continuous line of fire everywhere.\n",
"... |
why don't/can't motor vehicles have spherical wheels like in "i, robot"? | A spherical wheel just isn't practical. A sphere is going to have a small contact patch for the size of the wheel compared to a normal wheel. They would be hard to manufacture as well.
A car COULD have spherical wheels, but it just doesn't make sense to have them. | [
"In a wider sense, however, the term \"spherical robot\" may also be referred to a stationary robot with two rotary joints and one prismatic joint which forms a spherical coordinate system (e.g., Stanford arm\n",
"They are often used in intelligent robot research for small autonomous robots. In projects such as V... |
why can you drive a car when the parking brake is still on? | It's strong enough to resist the pull of gravity on a moderate slope, but not strong enough to fully resist the stronger pull of the engine in first gear. | [
"In road vehicles, the parking brake, also known as a hand brake or emergency brake (e-brake), is a mechanism used to keep the vehicle securely motionless when parked. Historically, it was also used to help perform an emergency stop should the main hydraulic brakes fail. Parking brakes often consist of a cable conn... |
Can a modern scientist believe in religion? | > The question posted should be one that can be answered by applying scientific principles.
Sorry your question does not belong here. Also your question is a bit odd, of course there are SOME scientists who believe in a specific religion in which humans have had contact with a transcendent being. The obvious answer is yes. It seems like you are trying to make a point about science and religion, hidden within a "question". | [
"One of the first attempts to develop a science of religion was \"The Varieties of Religious Experience\" by the American philosopher William James. James saw the basic experience which unified all religions as a sometimes life-changing personal event in which one perceives the connectedness of all things as one un... |
how does the fact that qubits can be both 0 and 1 at the same time allows for faster computations? | Quantum computer can evaluate combination of inputs. Let's say you have two people that say either yes (1) or no (0), and you have to decide whether they agree with each other.
On classical computer, you ask the first one, then you ask the second one, then you compare the answers. You needed to ask **two times.**
On a quantum computer, you can ask both of them at once. Or, better said, you can ask a "combination of them". You ask *first one + second one.* The answer will be precisely the thing you want:
* 0 + 0 = **0** (mod 2)
* 1 + 0 = **1** (mod 2)
* 0 + 1 = **1** (mod 2)
* 1 + 1 = **0** (mod 2)
So, if the *combination of the people* answers you **0**, it means they agree with each other. If the combination answers you **1**, it means that they disagree. So that means asking **one time** was sufficient.
Keep in mind that you don't have any information about their answers:
1. If they agree, you don't get to know what they agreed on.
2. If they don't agree, you don't get to know who of them said yes/no.
However, this information is useless for your goal, all you need is some kind of aggregated information about all people. | [
"There are two possible outcomes for the measurement of a qubit—usually taken to have the value \"0\" and \"1\", like a bit or binary digit. However, whereas the state of a bit can only be either 0 or 1, the general state of a qubit according to quantum mechanics can be a coherent superposition of both. Moreover, w... |
why are there super long words when some shorter words (ex: jeb) don't have any meaning? why not assign the shorter one a meaning? | Long words are often put together with different roots that point to their meaning. For example, take one of the longest words in the English language: antidisestablishmentarianism. Let's break it down:
* Anti- means against, so it's against disestablishmentarianism.
* -ism implies some philosophy, so we know that it's opposed to the philosophy held by disestablishmentarians.
* -arians implies a member of a group, in this case the group of disestablishment.
* -ment turns a verb into a noun, so disestablishment is the noun form of the word disestablish
* dis- means to undo, as in dismantle. In this case, it's undoing the verb establish
The only thing we can't figure out from the word itself is the establishment of *what*. It turns out that this is in reference to the Church of England.
When you put it all together, you can figure out that antidisestablishmentarianism means that it is the philosophy opposed to undoing the establishment of the Church of England.
You could replace it with the word jeb, but it would be very difficult to know what it meant, especially because it's not a very commonly used word. You'd have to explain the word pretty much every time it came up. | [
"In other words, syllables could be long because of the specific vowel (or a following \"*l/*m/*n/*r\"), or because a long consonant from the next syllable bled in. If both occurred, the syllable was overlong. See Mora (linguistics), which suggests that such overlong syllables are cross-linguistically rare.\n",
"... |
why do americans talk differently than brits, even though they emerged from them only a few hundred years ago. | Bear in mind that there are 150 British accents. | [
"This divergence between American English and British English has provided opportunities for humorous comment: e.g. in fiction George Bernard Shaw says that the United States and United Kingdom are \"two countries divided by a common language\"; and Oscar Wilde says that \"We have really everything in common with A... |
"It's not over 'til the fat lady sings" is a common idiom in English. Were many prima donnas overweight at one time, or is this a reference to a specific person -- or is it just a silly line with no basis in reality? | **TL;DR: It was popularized by the coach of the Washington Bullets basketball team during the 1978 NBA playoffs. He claimed to have borrowed it from a San Antonio sportswriter who uttered the phrase on a sportscast during the playoffs that year. However, it actually first appeared in print in Texas two years earlier. A 1976 booklet lends credence to it having its origins as a saying in Texas, in reference to church services, and this original phrase may date to a couple decades earlier. Whatever origins it may have before 1976, they are obscure.**
According to the *Oxford Dictionary of Idioms*:
> "This phrase comes from the saying the opera isn't over till the fat lady sings, which originated in the 1970s in the USA; it is
doubtful whether any particular operatic production or prima donna was ever intended."
The *American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms* agrees, with a little more information:
> "This term probably began life as 'the opera isn't over until the fat lady sings,' which appeared in a *Washington Post* article in 1978, but its precise provenance has been lost. The 'fat lady' isn't identified (many opera singers are ample in size) nor do many operas actually end with an aria from a plump singer. Nevertheless, the saying is widely used. A less colourful synonym is **it's not over till it's over**. Baseball hero Yogi Berra apparently used it often in 1973 (put as **it ain't over till it's over**) when he was managing the New York Mets, insisting that a ball game was not finished until the very end."
The phrase's origin story in Washington, D.C., is more precisely detailed in the article "A Little Big Man, a Fat Lady, and the Bullets' Remarkable Season" by Chris Elzey, published in the book *D.C. Sports: The Nation's Capital at Play*. According to Elzey, the story goes like this: on May 7, 1978, after Game 4 of the best-of-seven Eastern Conference Finals in the NBA playoffs, the Washington Bullets had taken a 3-1 series lead over the Philadelphia 76ers. The coach of the Washington Bullets, Dick Motta, was interviewed by a group of reporters, one of whom was particularly pushy about asking him how it felt to be on the verge of playing in the NBA Finals. Still a win away, Motta responded with the now-famous saying.
Both the *Washington Post* and the *Washington Star* provided the quote in the next day's newspaper, though quoted Motta slightly differently. According to the *Post*, Motta had said: "It's not over. It's like an opera. It doesn't end until the fat lady starts singing and that hasn't happened...yet."
According to the *Star*, Motta had said: "[T]he opera's never over until the fat lady sings".
The phrase was printed nationally in an Associated Press article by Alex Sachare [a month later](_URL_2_) after the conclusion of the NBA Finals (there was a month-long gap between the conference finals and NBA Finals back then):
> "[Washington Bullets coach] Dick Motta's 'Fat Lady' sang a happy tune Wednesday night as the Washington Bullets won their first National Basketball Association championship in the 17-year history of the franchise with a 105-99 victory over the Seattle SuperSonics.
>
> "Throughout the playoffs the Bullets' battle cry has been, 'The Opera Ain't Over 'til the Fat Lady Sings.' Motta, the coach of the Bullets, picked up the slogan from a San Antonio sportscaster because he felt its never-say-die sentiment fit his team perfectly."
Who was the San Antonio sportscaster that the AP reported that Motta had picked it up from? His name was Dan Cook, both a sportswriter for the *San Antonio Express-News* as well as the sports anchor at KENS-TV, the television station owned by the newspaper. According to Elzey:
> "Motta's introduction to the line most likely came on Monday, April 17, 1978, a day after the Bullets lost to the San Antionio Spurs in the opening game of the Eastern Conference semifinals. Motta was in his hotel room, watching TV, the knob flipped to channel 5, KENS. 'Some television announcer, a guy by the name of Cook, I think, said something about how the series between the Spurs and us was like an opera,' Motta told [*Washington Post* reporter] Paul Attner in June 1978. 'It wouldn't be over until the fat lady sang.'"
Motta claims that he then used the phrase in front of the press for the first time after Game 4 of that earlier series, April 23, 1978, though according to Elzey, no news report from the game quoted him using the phrase at that time. It was only two weeks later, when he used it again that "within days the nation's capital was all agog with an opera and a fat lady".
There's no question that Motta's usage popularized the phrase nationally. But was Cook the one who coined it? According to Cook, he said he did, and said he'd even once used it in a draft of one of his newspaper columns, but it was cut out before publication.
But the historical record disputes Cook's account. A more thorough backstory is provided by *The Yale Book of Quotations*, who discovered that, two years before its popularization during the Washington Bullets' 1978 playoff run, the phrase had been used by another sportswriter in Texas, 275 miles away from San Antonio, in Dallas. And that sports writer was quoting Ralph Carpenter during a basketball game, who worked at Texas Tech University:
> "'*The opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings*.' Quoted in *Dallas Morning News*, 10 Mar. 1976. [Ralph] Carpenter was sports information director at Texas Tech University when he uttered this line during a basketball game with Texas A & M. Sportscaster Dan Cook used the expression in a television broadcast, 10 May 1978, before a Washington Bullets–San Antonio Spurs playoff basketball game (Cook has usually been credited as the originator). ‘‘The fat lady’’ was then picked up and popularized by Washington coach Dick Motta."
So how did two sports reporters, and a college employee from different areas of Texas come to use the same phrase? One possibility is that Cook heard it from Carpenter in the course of his work, or perhaps Carpenter picked it up at some point from Cook. Whatever the truth is about how the two men learned it, it seems it wasn't entirely original to either. Whoever coined it very possibly adapted it from a pre-existing phrase already known in Texas, about church services. In 1976, the same year the phrase first appeared in the *Dallas Morning News*, it also appeared in a booklet of Southern phrases, but in a different form. Contradicting both Cook's and Carpenter's origination, *The Yale Book of Quotations* writes:
> "However, a 1976 booklet, *Southern Words and Sayings* by Fabia Rue Smith and Charles Rayford Smith, includes the saying ‘‘Church ain’t out
‘till the fat lady sings,’’ suggesting an ultimate origin in Southern proverbial lore. Ralph Keyes, ‘*Nice Guys Finish Seventh*’ (1992), records the recollections of several Southerners remembering similar phrases used as early as the 1950s."
Who was this fat lady at church who was singing? Was it at some particular church and the funny phrase spread to parishioners elsewhere? It remains a mystery. As the *American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms* writes, "its precise provenance has been lost".
Whatever its origin before 1976, it was certainly Motta's usage on May 7, 1978, that brought the phrase into the popular vernacular. Articles later in 1978 credited Motta with coining the phrase. For example, Steve Dilbeck of the *San Bernardino Sun* newspaper in California wrote [on October 30, 1978](_URL_0_) :
> "When the Bullets won the National Basketball Association title last season, Motta coined the saying, 'The opera ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.'"
Over the months that followed, the phrase began to be used by the sports press outside of basketball. An [August 12, 1978, blurb](_URL_3_) in a syndicated column written by L.A. sportswriter Bud Furillo stated:
> "How long can the Los Angeles Rams Cheerleaders stand the competition from their Pom-Pom Mom, Phyllis Wanger, short, plump and in her 50's? Yet she gets most of the applause from the fans at the Coliseum. Forget the posters of the pretty girls. I demand a poster of Pom-Pom Mom, with this caption: 'The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings'..."
A [November 1, 1978, article](_URL_1_) in a campus newspaper in Pennsylvania about the Washington Bullets' prospects for the upcoming season implied that the phrase may have entered wider colloquial usage by then, at least in the sports world:
> "Of course you can never count out the Big E, C.J. and company because after all they are the champs. But the truth of the matter is that other clubs just look stronger than the Bullets this year...But as we so well know by now, the opera isn't over until the fat lady sings."
A [December 4, 1978, Associated Press article](_URL_4_) demonstrates that the phrase had crossed over from the sports world into wider colloquial usage, in a story about a murder trial in Houston:
> "An expensive legal team plans to unveil on today [sic] the defense designed to quash murder conspiracy charges against millionaire Cullen Davis.
>
> "Although the state put on four weeks of damaging testimony against his client, attorney Richard Haynes said: 'The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings.'"
(***cont'd...***) | [
"Also, during the Marjorie Dawes sketches, he expresses much contempt for overweight people, such as calling them \"vermin\", or expressing a desire to have them arrested, removed from the country, spat on or shot dead. However, in one such sketch he states that he would strangle the overweight people himself, but ... |
How did the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System work? | There's a readable overview of the capabilities of the AN/FPS-50 Detection Radar in the Lincoln
Laboratory 40 year overview article [*Radars for the Detection and Tracking of Ballistic Missiles, Satellites, and Planets*](_URL_3_) (PDF Stone & Banner 2000).
> System requirements included longrange detection of missiles out to 4800-km range to
provide warning, target-threat characterization, accurate tracking for impact-point estimation, and communications to inform the command center for formulating counterstrike decisions.
The AN/FPS-50 Designation can be decoded using [Joint Electronics Type Designation System (JETDS)](_URL_5_).
It seems likely that Clear, Alaska also sported a [AN/FPS-49](_URL_0_) system during that period.
Thule, Greenland had similar systems to Clear, Alaska; the Online Air Defense Radar Museum site has [a scale photo](_URL_2_) from Thule that doesn't appear to be part of the [chatty memories & photos](_URL_4_) on the [Thule Scanner Rats](_URL_6_) site.
If the others are unable to dump a whole load more declassified material on you then you might get some satisfaction from the maintainers of the Online Air Defense Radar Museum site.
------------
Interestingly enough (spooky Cold War plot point?) the late 1960s Over The Horizon [Cobra Mist](_URL_1_) (AN/FPS-95 | System 441a) system in Suffolk, England never did quite work properly (shelved after ~ $100+ million expenditure) due to "a considerable amount of unexpected noise" (Deliberate jamming was not ruled out.) | [
"The Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) was a radar system built by the United States (with the cooperation of Canada and Denmark on whose territory some of the radars were sited) during the Cold War to give early warning of a Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) nuclear strike, to allow tim... |
Polynesian History | First, I feel I should point out that Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia are categories imposed on Oceania by (mostly) Western explorers, scholars, and governments and don't always have much explanatory value.
That said, there are an enormous number of good texts that deal with the islands usually classified as Polynesian.
Silva, Noenoe K. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004: As far as I know, the first historical monograph that relies on Hawaiian language sources to explore Hawaiian resistance against colonization.
Dening, Greg. The Death of William Gooch: A History’s Anthropology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995: A microhistorical exploration of 18th-century Hawaiian/British cultural encounter.
Lal, Brij. Broken Waves: A History of the Fiji Islands in the Twentieth Century. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992: A survey of twentieth century Fijian history by a widely respected historian at ANU.
Dening, Greg. Islands and Beaches : Discourse on a Silent Land : Marquesas, 1774-1880. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1980: An older theory based work that also functions as an early history of the Marquesas Islands.
Somerville, Alice T Punga. Once Were Pacific : Māori Connections to Oceania. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012: A recent indigenous studies text on New Zealand Maori connections to Pacific Islander immigrants.
These are just a few that come to mind. If you let me know what you're interested in specifically I'll post some more titles. | [
"Polynesians first came to Rapa Nui (also called Easter Island) sometime between 300 CE and 800 CE. These are the common elements of oral history that have been extracted from island legends. Linguistic, DNA and pollen analysis all point to a Polynesian first settlement of the island at that time, but it is unlikel... |
what happens to people who are caught on film stealing/rioting? | No. If you break the law, you break the law. If they have the suspects on film it just makes it that much easier to catch them. | [
"In one of a series of ‘crimes’ caught on CCTV, footage captures two men being caught en flagrante in a public toilet by a police officer. To get out of trouble, one of the men hides the other behind his coat and makes him disappear. In another incident, a man breaks into a car by sticking his hand through a glass ... |
how do i make money by buying a country's debt? | In simplest terms, you make money by buying a thing at one price, and selling it at a higher price.
"Sovereign debt" is basically about what money people call "liquidity." Liquidity is access to money. If you have a lot of money — either actual currency, as in banknotes and coins, or money on account at a bank — then you have a lot of liquidity. If you don't have much money, you don't have much liquidity … although you may have other things of value that you can use to *get* money.
A government — one that's working well, anyway — has something of intrinsic value: it's called "faith and credit." This is a very old, but very nebulous idea. It basically means that the government in question is "good for it." The government in question is something you can trust.
So sovereign debt is about a government exchanging its faith and credit for money, then using that money to do stuff like build a road or invade Nazi-occupied France or whatever.
In order to do this, to exchange faith and credit for money, a government creates and sells things called *bonds.* A bond is basically just a physical representation of the government's faith and credit. It's a piece of paper — though it isn't actually an actual piece of paper any more; we use computers for this now — that represents value. The government might, for example, issue a particular bond that says "In exchange for $100 today, you can redeem this bond for $110 a year from today." That's worth something, because again, the government has faith and credit: the government's *good for it.*
So you, with $100 in your pocket, go to the government and buy that bond. You've exchanged your cash for something which *isn't* cash but which has value … a *greater* value than the cash you paid for it.
So, in essence, you have already made money. The total value of the *stuff* you own now is greater than it was before you bought the bond. Good for you.
Of course, this brings us right back to liquidity again. Since you used all your cash to buy that bond, you no longer have any money. But you do have something that's worth money. That means you have two options. You can either wait until the bond "matures" (as it's called) and redeem it for its face value — $110 — or you can sell it right now to somebody else. Say I have $105 in my pocket; I might offer to buy your bond — for which you paid $100 — for $105, knowing that it'll be worth $110 when it matures. If you need cash *now* — that is, you're in a *liquidity crisis* — you would be well served by taking my offer. You'd get more money than you had to start with, meaning you made a profit, but you'd get less than you would've gotten if you'd been able to wait. I, on the other hand, paid more for the bond than I would've if I'd bought it directly from the government, but I'll still make a profit on it when it matures.
So the short answer to your question is that governments sell bonds, and bonds are valuable things. You make money off government bonds by buying them at one price, then either waiting until they mature or selling them on the open market for more than you paid for them.
(You will never make a *lot* of money this way; bonds aren't designed to be profitable, really. They're designed to be a secure store of value, meaning you can store value in bonds and know that you won't lose value over time.) | [
"Governments create debt by issuing government bonds and bills. Less creditworthy countries sometimes borrow directly from a supranational organization (e.g. the World Bank) or international financial institutions.\n",
"This is a list of countries by external debt, which is the total public and private debt owed ... |
I keep seeing people accusing /r/AskHistorians of being Marxist in nature, can someone help me explain why this isn't true? | As it states on [our rules page](_URL_5_): /r/Askhistorians is a forum that aims to provide serious, academic-level answers to questions about history. In line with that the mod team understands the core mission of this sub as educational outreach in the historic profession. Our main mission, our sense and purpose, is to provide and curate a space where people who have demonstrable expertise address and answer questions of people who seek knowledge and answers to their historical questions.
[Our rules](_URL_5_), our [system of flairing people](_URL_0_), who have shown expertise on a subject, our weekly threads, our [podcast](_URL_8_), our [FAQ](_URL_7_), our [Books and Resources List](_URL_3_), and our [twitter feed](_URL_9_) have all been created and are maintained with the above described mission in mind.
We strive to be transparent and open about why our rules are the way they are and how we enforce them via our frequent [Rules Roundtable](_URL_2_) as well as through posting removal reasons for every question we remove and frequently posting comments that explain why we removed a contribution as well as top level comments in threads where lots of contributions are removed. We frequently conduct [a census](_URL_1_) in which we ask our user base to tell us who they are, their feedback on our moderation and sub culture and what we can do better. We also address every META post about this sub and try to engage the community of over 500.000 subscribers as best and often as possible.
We have an incredibly diverse mod team comprised of 35 moderators, men and women, with a wide range of age, cultural, national, and educational background, and political opinion. Internally, our team is not structured hierarchically but along the principle of "one voice - one vote" in a democratic process.
Additionally, we have a team of over 200 flaired users from an even wider range of backgrounds and political opinions and also many non-flaired contributors with – I image – an equally diverse background.
With all this in mind, the idea that even if us 35 moderators could agree on a political agenda – and one that has such a specific connotation in history as Marxism to boot – and then be able to enforce among such a heterogeneous group of contributors and users borders on the absurd.
The only major consensus in this vast group of moderators, flaired users, non-flaired users, and readers – all in all over half a million people – is that writing, reading, and learning about history is important, it's fun, and it's interesting.
Marxism as an ideology and a political program that aims to abolish the private ownership of the means of production has a specific reading of history – one that is based on an interpretation of history leaning heavily towards a materialistic and economic-based reading of history as well as asserting a specific historical process based on the successions of different regimes of production: From a slave economy, through a feudal economy, to a capitalist economy.
Even if we as the people who run this sub could agree on the above – which we certainly would not be able to –, enforcing this interpretation of history as the only valid one would cost us many treasured contributors and most of our user base – to say nothing about not being in-line with our educational mission that includes providing a diverse pallet of historical interpretations and not limiting it to one that is glorified as the only valid one.
But from experience, it is my very strong suspicion that the people you are talking about – and I'd be really interested in some links to Facebook, which you mentioned – are not talking about Marxism in any classical sense at all. I strongly assume that what they are accusing us of is "cultural Marxism". "Cultural Marxism" – as is explained in-depth in [this post](_URL_6_) as well as [this one](_URL_4_) – is a conspiracy theory developed by William Lind and Pat Buchanan that essentially claims that anything in the humanities that is critical towards currently existing conditions and does not affirm their view of the world is part of an effort of "political correctness" intended to destroy Western civilization as it should be.
Now, the reasons why we are accused of this are manifold:
a.) We as a sub and out community of contributors embrace – as the humanities en large – a wide range of theories and approaches to our subject matter. This includes but is by no means limited to feminist approaches and theories; approaches and theories that study racism and racial inequality; and post-modernist and post-structuralist theories and approaches – all things adherents of the above mentioned CM conspiracy theory claim are specifically intended to destroy Western civilization by spreading "political correctness".
b.) In line with our core mission of education and the spread of historical knowledge, we do not allow and take a stand against racism, sexism, and all other forms of bigotry. Seeing as we are a sub that wants to educate people and promote the spread of academic knowledge, these things have no place here. Seeing as how adherents of the "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theory often fall into these categories, they are not too happy about that.
c.) Also in line with our education mission, we do not allow our sub to be used as a soapbox to spread a political agenda. This has earned us the ire of people ranging from staunch orthodox Stalinists to hardcore Nazis, and also, of course, from adherents of the CM conspiracy since their contributions would fall along this line.
The reasons why this is absurd and blatantly untrue are that none such conspiracy exists (which would be obvious had any adherents of the CM conspiracy even read critical theory); that our whole rule set that is geared towards people having to provide their sources (if asked but better yet, right away), which opens up everything they wrote to public scrutiny (the way every science operates in principle: Give your audience every opportunity to falsify every claim you make by arguing on the base of evidence and referencing said evidence); our transparency in formulating and enforcing these rules; and that even if we wanted, enforcing a coherent political agenda in this sub would be impossible due to the sheer number of people in our team, contributing, and reading.
We are here and do what we do to spread knowledge about history and educate people and attempt to do so in accordance with academic, scientific, and in-depth standards; the notion that is a nefarious agenda aimed at the destruction of Western civilization or anything resembling Marxism in whatever form should strike any person, who's mind has not been filled with lies, as absurd on the face of it.
| [
"Marxism remains a powerful theory in some unexpected and relatively obscure places and is not always properly labeled as \"Marxism\". For example, many Mexican and some American archaeologists still employ a Marxist model to explain the Classic Maya collapse (c. 900 A.D.) – without mentioning Marxism by name.\n",
... |
Why are these mushrooms growing in a circle? | There is a long article in Wikipedia about these structures. _URL_0_
The short version is that the rings are formed by a mushroom colony. As the colony grows it depletes the nitrogen in the soil and so must grow outwards to find new nitrogen. Once the colony gets big enough it forms a circle with nitrogen poor soil inside and the fungus growing towards the richer soil outside.
What you see is the fruiting bodies (mushrooms) that are pushed up from the active growth areas after rain. | [
"The species has been found only on coastal sand dunes near Olbia, in Sardinia, where it was observed growing at the base of \"Juncus maritimus\" (the sea rush), between the winter months of October and January. However, there is speculation that it may also grow elsewhere in Europe. Mushrooms were seen growing fro... |
law of independent assortment and law of segregation | To sexually reproduce, (how most complex life has children), you need to mix half of your DNA (the instructions for how to make you) with half of your partners.
Your body does this by making cells that only have half of your DNA in them (unlike every other cell that has all of it). Your partner does this too, and when you sexually reproduce, this combines the two into one cell with a whole set of DNA.
Mendels laws come into play when we talk about *how* the DNA decides what traits (like your eye colour, how your ear lobes look etc.) are passed on. The traits are governed by pairs of genes (places on the list of DNA that says what the body needs to make to cause a certain trait). It takes two genes to decide whether or not, or how a trait is expressed. These two genes are called alleles, they govern the same trait (eg. hair colour), but they can lay out instructions for it differently (blonde, brown etc).
**NB**: Mendel's laws (the guy who discovered them by spending his life growing and monitoring pea plants) only apply at the *time the gametes are being formed*.
The Law of Segregation says that when a gamete is being made, a chromosome pair (the chromosomes are each half-lists of DNA instructions in your cells) has to split. This means that one chromosome's *allele* for a certain trait has to be segregated from the other.
The law of independent assortment is the very similar, but it is used when more than one allele pair is being looked at. The law says that when allele pairs split (when the chromosome pairs separate), they separate without paying attention to how the other pairs are separating. It doesn't matter to pair 1 how pair 2 separates.
This also means that when the gametes from either partner are joined up again, all of the traits are passed on independently, in other words, your hair colour doesn't depend on how your ears look, because the two are goverend by different alleles.
The Law of Independent Assortment doesn't apply when the two different allele pairs lie on the same chromosome however, because if you separate the lists, the two alleles are being separated together.
| [
"In U.S. law, particularly after \"Brown v. Board of Education\" (1954), the difference between de facto segregation (segregation that existed because of the voluntary associations and neighborhoods) and de jure segregation (segregation that existed because of local laws that mandated the segregation) became import... |
Is it possible that our universe is part of a much larger system? | **Is it possible that our universe is part of a much larger system?**
Yes. There are many theories concerning what's outside of our universe though the evidence for any one of them is extremely scarce.
One of the most popular theories is called [eternal inflation](_URL_2_) or sometimes bubble universe theory. It says that there is ever expanding (- > eternal inflation) multiverse in which small little bubbles are forming. Our universe is one of these bubbles and there are many other universes out there that are completely different. In fact these other universe may even have completely different physical constants.
Pretty much the only testable prediction of this theory would be that the different universes may collide or split. In particular it has been suggested that what we call the big bang may have been the moment in which our universe split from a different universe. Such an event should have left noticeable traces in the cosmic background radiation. Proposers of the theory hope that we might find such traces when our resolution of the CMB increases.
**What impact would our speed have on us relative to them?**
This is a bit of a nonsensical question - your own speed relative to something else doesn't have any impact on you (this is one of the core premises of relativity).
If however you ask what effect our speed relative to them would have on their perception of us then I can only say that it would probably be minor compared to the other effects. We are talking about seriously exotic systems with possibly entirely different physical laws and constants.
Heck, even our own universe has undergone periods where measly speeds of a few million miles per hour didn't mean anything. During the inflationary epoch I would have moved away from you at something like 10^70 meters per second (the speed of light is about 3 * 10^8 meters per second).
**What if our universe is just a bottom quark of a proton in said larger system?**
This is also a somewhat popular theory which is belongs to the class of what I call recursion multiverse theories. Whether every universe is an elementary particle or every universe is a black hole or what ever, the general idea is the same: there are infinitely many smaller and larger universes and we are somewhere in the middle.
Do these theories make any testable predictions? Certainly. If our universe is a black hole in a different universe for example then we might expect our universe to radiate away over time (see [Hawking radiation](_URL_1_)). If on the other hand it is some elementary particle then it might rapidly decay any moment or change all its physical properties within the blink of an eye. Neither seems to be the case. In fact there isn't that much extraordinary stuff going on in our universe that would require a multiverse apart from our existence perhaps (- > [anthropic principle](_URL_3_)).
The problem with these kinds of theories is that they either lack a consistent mathematical foundation or require an extreme amount of fine-tuning which is never a good sign.
**Edit:**
I wan't to clarify something concerning my answer to the third question: certainly these theories don't necessarily imply that weird stuff must be going on like spontaneous changes in the physical constants or something. However, most of them need to be further corrected and fine tuned in order not to do so. In science violating the [principle of parsimony (also called Occam's razor)](_URL_0_) is usually considered a bad thing to do when there are other theories at hand making "simpler" claims (such as eternal inflation). | [
"If the universe is finite but unbounded, it is also possible that the universe is \"smaller\" than the observable universe. In this case, what we take to be very distant galaxies may actually be duplicate images of nearby galaxies, formed by light that has circumnavigated the universe. It is difficult to test this... |
Does Zinc Rust? | Zinc is very active (reacts easily) so the surface of your pendent is already "rusted" to zinc oxide. Zinc (to my knowledge) doesn't form a very protective layer when it oxidizes, so repeated exposure to water will rust it in a way -- the corrosion will continue, but you're not gonna see red/orange spots on it or anything. You're probably fine to swim with it though: the gray metal on many traffic signal/sign poles is zinc (galvanized iron), and they look just fine after lots of rain and sunlight cycles, though they eventually degrade. | [
"Zinc pest (from German \"Zinkpest\"), also known as zinc rot and mazak rot, is a destructive, intercrystalline corrosion process of zinc alloys containing lead impurities. While impurities of the alloy are the primary cause of the problem, environmental conditions such as high humidity (greater than 65%) may accel... |
what is good or bad about protectionism? who are its winners and losers? | To understand what is happening at the grand scale, consider what happens when you and I freely engage in trade. I give you things you value more than I, while you give things I value more than you. As a result, both of us end up with more value. So when you place impediments in the way of such trade, you decrease the amount of potential value - money - that is being made. As a result, protective trade barriers tend to have a negative economic effect when considered in isolation.
Now imagine a scenario where you feed your family by selling widgets. Your neighbor comes along and starts selling widgets, but at a slightly lower cost, taking all of your business. Despite the fact that people *in general* win in this scenario - they're getting cheaper widgets, your neighbor is becoming prosperous - you *personally* lose a great deal since your ability to make a live is wrecked.
At the grand scale, this doesn't happen with individuals so much as entire industries. The textiles industry, for example, is almost absent in virtually all developed nations. Because textiles are one of the easiest industries for low technology nations to engage in, newly industrialized nations tend to out-compete developed nations. The shape of the modern textiles industry is one where developed nations tend to take the lead in design, sales and distribution while developing nations perform all of the labor. But if you're a person with a skillset that doesn't include design, sales and distribution but does include actually making textiles, this leaves you without a career.
The flip side of this coin would be automaking. Building automobiles is a complex, technical process with considerable design elements and a high barrier to entry. In a perfectly 'fair' competition, it's extremely difficult for developing nations to compete with the developed world. So if you're in a developing nation and want an auto industry, you tend to enact protections to favor local industry that could not otherwise compete.
In the developing world, the second type of protectionism is an almost pure win because you're really just giving up what most of your people can't afford anyway.
In the developed world, the effect of protectionism ends up being more of an "everyone suffers, not just the poor" effect. Let's assume the U.S. enacted massive protectionist efforts against textile manufacture. While this would bring textile jobs 'back home', these jobs would be bare minimum wage jobs that barely allowed someone to support themselves. It would also dramatically raise the cost of textiles in the U.S., meaning that the people working at those minimum wage jobs would have greater expenses than they otherwise would. So the new textile worker would have been slightly better off if they just kept their job stocking shelves at Walmart and not had the protective barrier in place.
However, the textile manufacturer with a small office containing only skilled workers overseeing a global operation primarily conducted in foreign nations would get hammered by such rules. They'd see their customer base drop from a world-wide customer base to a national one.
This is why you don't really see much actual support for protectionism except as rhetoric. The higher up the industrial ladder a nation is, the more it suffers from protective barriers. However, developing nations can't realistically 'develop' in the first place without the infusion of cash and expertise from the developed world that requires lowering trade barriers. | [
"Protectionism is frequently criticized by economists as harming the people it is meant to help. Mainstream economists instead support free trade. The principle of comparative advantage shows that the gains from free trade outweigh any losses as free trade creates more jobs than it destroys because it allows countr... |
why is the drunk driving problem so big in u.s.a., when european countries have a much younger drinking age and not as high numbers? | We drive more. Euro cities have a walking/mass transit culture and we don't because we're huge. I'd wager drunk driving is much lower in a walking city such as new York. Nobody walks in a city like la. We are made up of suburbs and spread out cities and large expanses of rural areas. | [
"The US Economy loses hundreds of billions of dollars from lost productivity and earnings with alcohol-related illness being a primary factor. The most dangerous social problem involved in underage drinking is driving under the influence because of its contribution to fatalities and injury among adolescents. One-th... |
Were there inns along the Silk Road? | The term caravansary (with some alternate spellings) is generally used for the inn-like structures that would be used along trade routes through the Middle East, Persia, and India, at least. Since the Silk Road was a major long-distance trade route with large caravans moving through it, caravansaries were often built to make travel safer and more pleasant. Some of them were quite large, with lots of amenities like baths and small markets for caravans to trade or buy supplies. Some lovely pictures [here](_URL_0_). It would be in the interests of the locals to provide these in highly-traveled areas, as they would encourage the traveling merchants to travel through your town and provide local trade and possibly tolls. | [
"BULLET::::- The Silk Road is established after the diplomatic travels of the Han Dynasty Chinese envoy Zhang Ian to Central Asia, with Chinese goods making their way to India, Persia, and the Roman Empire, and vice versa.\n",
"As it became the main route between the two cities, local commerce began to serve the ... |
Are 2 Telescopes Better Than 1? | You get two advantages.
Firstly, you effectively have a bigger light bucket. More photons is always a good thing.
Secondly, because your telescopes are a distance apart, you can use interferometry to get really high resolution. This is used with optical telescopes such as [Keck](_URL_0_), but it's the radio astronomers who have taken this to [ridiculous](_URL_1_) [levels](_URL_2_). | [
"Largest does not always equate to being the best telescopes, and overall light gathering power of the optical system can be a poor measure of a telescope's performance. Space-based telescopes, such as the Hubble Space Telescope, take advantage of being above the Earth's atmosphere to reach higher resolution and gr... |
how do small businesses survive against big ones. | Quality, Customer loyalty, Choice, Service, Flexibility, Culture
Quality: Serve a better burger and fries. Make the burgers on site use real bacon and cut the French fries yourself. Your combo costs 8 bucks but it's a full 1/2 lb burger with crisp bacon and melted swiss and the fries are hot and fresh and use coarse sea salt or a seasoned salt rather than the fine powdered stuff you get at Mcdonalds.
Customer Loyalty: I know several small burger joints that have been in business at the same location for 40-50 years. My grandparents ate there my parents ate there I ate there as a kid and I eat there as an adult.
Choice: When discussing where to eat most people only give each restaurant vote even if there are 20 Taco bells nearby and only one Juans taco shack. Taco bell and Taco shack get the same number of customers per location.
Service: Small businesses often have the owner or a close relative of the owner on site. This is generally less true for franchises. Everything that small business owner has is tied into the business and they give it their all to make customers happy and want to come back. While a manager at a chain restaurant has considerably less investment in insuring customer happiness.
Flexibility: A Mcdonalds franchise costs nearly a million dollars to start depending of course on location and some other factors. A local burger joint costs a 20,000-100,000. If the burger joint sees a good location they can move in instantly and set up shop across the street from their old store while Mcdonalds has to check if the franchise rights will allow them to move. In another scenario say the owner of a small restaurant discovers amazing footlong bratwurst one day. They can be on his menu that night to see if the customers like them. Mcdonalds has a set menu with very little room for deviation.
Culture: This is tied to the customer loyalty but is more community oriented. Some places don't want a mcdonalds in their community. Resorts and Vacation destinations often limit the ability of large restaurants to move in because there is a negative stigma attached to the culture around Mcdonalds.
| [
"Small businesses in many countries include service or retail operations such as convenience stores, small grocery stores, bakeries or delicatessens, hairdressers or tradespeople (e.g., carpenters, electricians), restaurants, guest houses, photographers, very small-scale manufacturing, and Internet-related business... |
why is abortion so heavily regulated by the government? | Many people believe that abortion is morally equivalent to murder, or at least a form of murder.
As a result, they advocate policies that they believe will reduce the number of these acts or punish the people who conduct them.
The reason it seems like there is so much government involvement is because a large number of people disagree with that sentiment. This isn't the case with things like, say, murder or even the use of hard drugs. As a result there are far more areas where the groups come into conflict when it comes to policy, so you see it more. | [
"Due to the religious views on abortion, society stigmatizes women who receive abortions. Many women account that they are stuck deciding between whether to have an abortion or have a child outside of marriage, both of which cause them to be ostracized from society. Some reasons that lead women to pursue abortions ... |
; other than tax evasion, please explain exactly what crime cohen committed in relation to trump and what crime trump may have committed in relation to cohen | > [Cohen] told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the payments to the women were made “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” implicating the president in a federal crime.
This is a campaign finance violation, which is a type of felony. Basically the money Cohen paid the women who allegedly had an affair with Trump is considered a donation to the campaign and wasn't reported as such, since if it had been reported it would've been flagged as illegal. | [
"Trump employed Cohen until May 2018, a year after the Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections began. The investigation led him to plead guilty on August 21, 2018, to eight counts including campaign finance violations, tax fraud, and bank fraud. Cohen said he viol... |
Will the human evolve to lose the little toe? | For humans to evolve to not have a little toe, humans with smaller or no little toe would have to have some significant advantage in survival (especially before reproductive age) or be considered much more attractive that people with short or absent little toes have more children.
The research does seem to indicate that [longer toes are a disadvantage when running](_URL_2_) compared to shorter toes. But given how little humans have to run in their lives in modern society, it seems unlikely that any advantage in running would translate to having more children.
[An old study in England](_URL_0_) found the average adult there puts about 9% of their weight through their fifth toe during walking, but importantly about 8% of these English people studied didn't put any weight through their little toe at all. So it's perfectly possible to walk normally, in a straight line, without using your little toe, especially if you normally wear shoes. Those are usually barefoot put more pressure through their little toe (see [Figure 7 of this paper](_URL_1_) ).
So having read a bit of the research on this it seems that the loss of a fifth toe could only ever happen in a society where nobody walks or runs barefoot anymore. And if I may speculate, probably would require a bit of sexual selection, perhaps where women who can fit their toes into small toeboxes of high heels are considered more attractive. I just don't think the selective pressures are strong enough, so I think our little toes will be around for a long time yet. | [
"Despite the distressing nature of the condition, outcomes are excellent. Loss of the toe is extremely rare, as is any residual disability. In rare cases the loss of a digit is possible. Rubber bands can have the same effect.\n",
"If the infection in the feet and toes entered the bones, it could cause them to sof... |
Is there anything that does not have mass? | Photons and gluons have no mass.
More generally, only things which have mass have mass. I know, I know, that sounds useless tautological. But it clarifies the point that mass is a property of *things,* and thus admits the possibility that there should be observable phenomena to which mass, as a concept, does not apply. | [
"In particle physics, a massless particle is an elementary particle whose invariant mass is zero. The two known massless particles are both gauge bosons: the photon (carrier of electromagnetism) and the gluon (carrier of the strong force). However, gluons are never observed as free particles, since they are confine... |
australia. did it really start as a place to exile criminals and lepers and how did it become full of seemingly normal people (and not a completely lawless society full of the offspring of criminals)? | The History of Australia is a pretty kick ass thing, and parts of our history even turn up in things like Sherlock Holmes stories.
So Australia as a nation consists of Aboriginal History, Cook and the subsequent first fleet, the gold rush, federation and then the past 114 years- we're a young nation, kind of like our big brothers United States (who had a fight with Dad and moved out, kind of prompting us into existence) and our other older (half) brother Canada.
We'll skip the Aboriginal History, because as interesting as it is, I don't feel it's pertinent to your question as you're addressing the mainly white colonial history of Australia.
So the way it goes is that after the Portugese and Dutch found the Western Coast and thought it was pretty shit house, the Brits decided to send out their man Capt. James Motherfucking Cook (middle name might be inaccurate) Cook went out with his crack team of sailors and found the East Coast, which they all decided was far less Shit than the west coast that those smelly mainland European Colonial Powers found, and they figured it'd be a good place to start a Colony. It was close to India and the Spice Islands, and (as far as they were concerned) no one lived here. It was perfect. This was in 1770
Now after dropping his maps off back home to England Capt. James M.F. Cook was killed by some pacific Islanders (as was the fashion for British Naval Officers at the time) namely the Hawaiians, who's King he tried to kidnap and ransom after some of the cheeky Hawaiian buggers knicked one of his boats
So about 18 years later, after the British fucked about having a fight with our big brother Thirteen Colonies- who by that point had moved out and changed his name, the First Fleet arrived to set up a Penal Colony in what the British called New South Wales- because hey, what's a better place to send a bunch of dissidents you don't like very much to a Place that you named after a nation of people who didn't like you very much? The First Fleet mainly composed of petty to minor criminals (with the occasional big criminal who just got caught for something stupid) Administrators, Marines and police, and a couple of free settlers as well.
Now the common misconception is that New South Wales was a place that was essentially an entire country populated by an HBO prison drama. But the people on the first fleet were generally poor people who were just trying to make it till tomorrow in a pretty shitty England. Not the cool England with food and lights and carpets, but the type of England that was grimy and not very well fed or clothed. But alas, criminals they still were.
What a lot of them got though was a second chance. Help build the colony- serve your sentence in this beautiful sub tropical paradise and you'll get some land and become a land owner. Score. Those who didn't play along generally got shipped off to more shithouse prisons, Like St Helena Island off the coast of what is now Queensland, or Port Arthur down in Tasmania- which was even worse because the only people you could have sex with down there was your family (I'm pretty sure it was in their Colonial Charter)
But I'm jumping ahead. New South Wales Eventually became too big to be governed effectively. So the colonies of Queensland and Victoria were founded. Shortly after Victoria was founded the Collingwood Football Club came into existence and just pissed everyone off.
So You've got all these convicts who are making money. Some doing Cattle Farming, some doing sheep farming, some even lucky enough to be in the sugar cane industry. They were making a shittonne of money, and in typical former convict fashion going home to Old Blighty and sticking two fingers up in the forms of stacks of pound notes. Seriously these people were getting rich, so free settlers came. Now you had a mix of convicts, reformed convicts, military and free settlers. Some of the free settlers thought they were better than everyone else and they refused to mingle- so they founded South Australia (and they can fucking stay there).
At some point Perth/Western Australia was founded but it's so far away it might as well be another country.
**So what does all of that have to do with answering your question?**
Well the key thing is that convicts were able to make something of themselves with a second chance. Something they wouldn't have had back in England. They just would have been thrust back into the same cycle of poverty that sent them to Australia in the first place. What they got by being sent here forms what is (in my opinion) quintessential building blocks of the Australian personality. The Ideals of "A Second Chance" and "A fair go."
The Convicts got a second chance to make right with their lives, and got given a fair go afterwards. We toiled together as a bunch of peoples essentially stranded in the middle of nowhere to make the best of it. When those convicts figured out there was a lot here for everyone, they brought people from back home, and sure there was some animosity (some people don't take kindly to being shipped 3/4 of the way around the world to be put in prison) but the free settlers were given a fair go. During the wars, we took in European refugees and gave them a second chance, hell it's how we ended up with the biggest Greek population in the world outside of Greece. We did the same for refugees from Vietnam. Second chances and fair goes at life. We still do it today (though lets not get into any arguments about the turn back the boats policy- that's a bunch of disassociated fat cats in Parliament making decisions and spinning it with fear) but the premise is still there. If you come here we do our best to give you a second chance at life, and our best to give you a fair go of things.
Now that doesn't mean we didn't monumentally fuck up. Remember the Aboriginals who we thought weren't a thing? Well they were a thing and they got treated pretty fucking badly, about as bad as the Native Americans and Canadian First peoples, and we're only just trying to fix up that shitstorm of a mess now-ish (within about the past 30 or so years). But the idea is there.
We still do however keep a lot of the larrikin spirit that came from the convicts. We love to take the piss out of England and beat them at sports. We still love em. Fuck, Lizzy's still on all our coins and one of our notes. Plus we recently knighted her hubby: Sir Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh. We'd still go to war for them if they asked us (nicely). Just like we'd go to war for Big Brother America when he asks, cause then we get to hang out with big brother Canada. So there's still that convict larrikin stick it to the man spirit there, it's a part of our identity, but because of being given a second chance and a fair go in our early days, that's what stopped us from devolving into an anarchist wasteland.
Tl;Dr- what you didn't read it, go back and fucking read it.
**EDIT**
Well a guy goes to work then for a sleep and this fucking blows up. Thank you for the gold, and I'll answer any follow-up questions in time.
**edit** Girt
| [
"When that avenue closed in the 1780s after the American Revolution, Britain began using parts of what is now known as Australia as penal settlements. Australian penal colonies included Norfolk Island, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), Queensland and New South Wales. Advocates of Irish Home Rule or of Trade Unionism (t... |
If Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't nuked, could there have been a North Japan like North Korea? | This is a topic which is debated quite a bit by orthodox and revisionist historians. Around the same time when the bombs were dropped, the Soviet Union declared was on Japan.
The orthodox viewpoint states that it was the shock of the atomic bombs which brought Japan into surrender.
The revisionist viewpoint says that the bombs had little effect, given how much bombing Japan had suffered up to that point. Instead, they argue that the declaration of war by the Soviet Union was what brought Japan to surrender to the US, for the exact reason that the Japanese leadership did not want this exact event to occur.
So, if you follow the revisionist view, then no, there would not have been a North and a South Japan, as the cause of their surrender was in large part due to the fear of this exact thing. They wanted to have the peace before Russia got onto Japanese soil and had a claim to make this a reality. | [
"There is also much concern in Japan regarding North Korea and its nuclear and long-range missile capabilities, as a result of missile tests in 1993, 1998 and 2006 and an underground nuclear test in 2006. There are also controversies regarding North Korean abductions of Japanese, where Japanese citizens were abduct... |
I was just reading about Lincoln on Wikipedia, did you really just have to pass test (as apposed to getting a law degree) to become a lawyer in the 1830s? | Historically "reading law" - doing an apprenticeship at a law firm or under a sole lawyer and then sitting and passing the bar - was the main way to become a lawyer in the US. Until 1773 there were no law schools in the US: Litchfield Law School - founded in 1773 - was the first, but even this were meant to supplement, rather than replace, the apprenticeship.
It was possible to skip the apprenticeship all together - if you had access to the necessary books (this was the major hang up for most people - unless you had access to a lawyers collection of books then getting your hands on them and doing the necessary studies was near impossible), the time, the skill, and the self determination to learn all you need to know then it was possible to teach yourself and pass the bar.
It wasn't until the 1890s that States, under pressure from the American Bar Association, began to require formal education in the subject to be admitted.
California, Maine, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington still allow a person to sit and pass the bar, even if they have no formal education in the subject. | [
"Using books borrowed from the law firm of Stuart and Judge [[Thomas Drummond (judge)|Thomas Drummond]], Lincoln began to study law in earnest during the first half of 1835. Lincoln did not attend law school, and stated: \"I studied with nobody.\" As part of his training, he read copies of [[William Blackstone|Blac... |
new to online gaming, what are ping and latency and how does it impact my gaming experience? | Ping is how long it takes information from the host to reach your computer. You always want the lowest ping possible. Anything over 100 can start to really disrupt gameplay. | [
"Some factors that might affect ping include: communication protocol used, Internet throughput (connection speed), the quality of a user's Internet service provider and the configuration of firewalls. Ping is also affected by geographical location. For instance, if someone is in India, playing on a server located i... |
Can a planet have more than 4 seasons? | Well, the seasons are kinda arbitrary, it's not like you wake up one day and suddenly everything is different. It's all gradual changes.
How we've come to regard it, is basically there's a warm part of the year (summer) and a cold part of the year (winter); and a bit where it's getting warmer (spring) and a bit when it's getting colder (autumn or fall). Warm or cold is a binary choice, so think of it being the two extremes plus the two transitions.
What could you call a fifth?
I mean I guess you could start to split it up more, you could have the bit where it's starting to get warmer but isn't really warm yet (early spring), the bit where it's warm and still getting warmer (late spring).
I suppose you could even divide each season into three, a start middle and end. Then you'd have 12 seasons, about 30 days each.
See what I mean it's arbitrary? | [
"Of all the planets in the Solar System, the seasons of Mars are the most Earth-like, due to the similar tilts of the two planets' rotational axes. The lengths of the Martian seasons are about twice those of Earth's because Mars's greater distance from the Sun leads to the Martian year being about two Earth years l... |
How do we know it's 2018? What if, 1500 years ago, some years were skipped or miscounted? | Hi there -- not discouraging further answers, but this gets asked here pretty often. [This section of the FAQ](_URL_1_) may be of some interest to you, particularly [this top answer](_URL_0_) from u/sunagainstgold. | [
"The Year 2000 problem, also known as the Y2K problem, the Millennium bug, the Y2K bug, the Y2K glitch, or Y2K, is a class of computer bugs related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates beginning in the year 2000. Problems were anticipated, and arose, because many programs represented four-digit ... |
airport management | This varies from airport to airport, and from country to country.
In the UK, airports are all privately owned. It's down to the individual airport's management to work out a business plan, but as you suspected, this will include charging airlines to use the airport, and charging shops to operate in the airport.
At larger airports, the shops will be the biggest source of revenue. A common trick used by Ryanair (Irish low-cost airline which operates mainly out of the UK) was to go to a very small airport with few, if any, jet movements. They'd say to the airport management "we'd like to operate 6 flights a week out of your airport. Each of these will have up to 180 passengers, who are each paying for car parking and using your shops. That's a lot of extra revenue for you, so if you want that recent you'll not charge us any fees for using your nearly-dead airport, and you'll arrange cheap fuel for us. That will get your airport known, so other airlines may move in soon too."
As for gates and terminals, airlines have to appoint a "handling agent" to do this for them. Most airports have a choice of handling agents, but typically there'll be one for airlines and one or two for private flights. Smaller airports might only have one handling agent, and very small ones may handle the aircraft themselves. Check out Servisair, one of the biggest handling agents in the world, for an example. | [
"Airports Council International (ACI) is the only global trade representative of the world's airport authorities. Established in 1991, ACI represents airports' interests with governments and international organizations, develops standards, policies and recommended practices for airports, and it provides information... |
I am a middle-class woman in Britain circa 1860. What does my daily routine consist of? | Do you mean middle-class in the British sense (something like 'the professional class') or in the US sense which seems to include working people? | [
"Middle-class women's leisure activities included in large part traditional pastimes such as reading, embroidery, music, and traditional handicrafts. More modern pursuits were introduced to women's lives during the 19th century, however. Opportunities for leisure activities increased dramatically as real wages cont... |
Is it possible for a moderately massed object to trap things in an orbit? | Heh, spherical people in a vacuum.
So, there is no minimum mass. Sufficiently far from other masses, any two masses can enter into an orbit.
For example, if you have a 1kg bit of material, a 1g sized object could orbit it at a distance of 1m by moving 8.17 microns/second - about the diameter of a red blood cell every second. At this rate it would take a little over 17 days 19 hours to complete an orbit.
However, any large mass nearby could easily disturb such an orbit. | [
"An object placed in orbit around (or ) will remain there indefinitely without having to expend fuel to keep its position, whereas an object placed at , or (all points of unstable equilibrium) may have to expend fuel if it drifts off the point.\n",
"Ballistic capture is a method of achieving orbit around a planet... |
why and how do we physically feel our hearts when we have strong emotions? like in the phrase "my heart skipped a beat" or "my heart dropped" for example. | your body doesn't take chances. So when ever any kind of stress comes along (Physical or emotional) it does the same thing: gets ready to act.
you feel it change suddenly because that's exactly what happens. It immediately changes how fast and strong its beating to supply your body with more energy to deal with whatever might happen. You interpret this sensation as skipping a beat, but its just an illusion.
When the change is gradual like with exercise you never really notice it. Its when it changes abruptly that its jarring. | [
"Different types of devices can be used to produce the physiological changes. Of the bodily organs, the heart plays a particularly important role in our emotional experience. The heart imitator HaptiHeart produces special heartbeat patterns according to emotion to be conveyed or elicited (sadness is associated with... |
how do animals at the zoo get their exercise? | They don't get nearly enough exercise. Many wild animals in zoos are incredibly unhappy. It is legal because no one gives a fuck. | [
"Behind the Zoo Behind the Zoo is a chance to learn about taking care of animals. Visitors can touch the animals and bathe the animals. This activity has staff teaching about bathing and cleaning animals (elephants, gaurs, giraffes and white rhinos).\n",
"Some zookeepers train the animals to make caring for them ... |
why do different baby carrot brands taste so differently? | The flavor of food can vary depending on where and how it was grown. Soil quality can have a big impact on flavor. | [
"Both domestic and wild carrot are from the same species, \"Daucus carota\" L. There are several subspecies of \"Daucus carota\" that have evolved to different climates and atmospheres. Two examples of these subspecies are specifically from the Netherlands. \"D. carota\" subsp. \"sativus\" has roots that can be a w... |
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