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what happens to my old memories and skills after a brain transplant? am i the new persons brain now? do i have their memories and skills? am i still me? | Isn't this question literally unanswerable at the moment? Brain transplant has never been done | [
"A significant proportion of the prior learning and the development of skills which has already taken place within an adult's brain can often be retained post injury. However, a brain at the earlier stages of development, if damaged, might never develop the capacity to learn those skills, leading to subsequent diff... |
what is continuous compounding? | The effect your describing is misleading. If my bank account gives me 6 cents per dollar I have in the bank in interest, you might say I get 6% interest. How often this is compounded(figured out and added) is important.
Its always 6% per year, but what if it's calculated annually? Dec31st roles around, my dollar is now 1.06. Gravy, right? Now let's do it monthly. After January I get my interest, 1/12th of 6% interest is .5% interest(remember I get this twelve times). .5% of my dollar is half a cent, now my bank has 1.005 in it.
This where things start to compound. That .005 attached at the end is now used in February's interest calculation, so I'm making interest on my interest! So on Feb 28th, I get to add my .5% interest and its .5% of 1.005 which is clearly going to be a bigger number than .5% of 1.00.
This is compounding interest and it has ramifications in tons of fields. What's important to note is that you can't just say "Well I want it make interest on my interest so fast its going to spike to a infinity". Think about what's added.
When we went from annually to monthly, our calculation dropped from 6% to .5% because I broke my interest up into 12 pieces. What happens if I do my calculation every day? My percentage daily and is going to plummet. Yes, it will always be a higher amount, but due to the interest rate being so incredibly small that after a certain point we plateau and by compounding every minute or second or millisecond we just can't seem to get much higher. Its always higher, just not by very much.
It just so happens we have a constant that describes the relationship between the plateau and the interest rate when compounding, as its an important number in mathematics and that's Euler's constant, also known as e. I'd heavily encourage you to go check the wiki article for this if your generally hateful towards letters in your math, its actually quite straight forward if you followed my explanation.
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"BULLET::::- In finance, continuous compounding is the limiting case of compound interest in which the compounding period becomes infinitesimally small, achieved by taking the limit as the number of compounding periods per year goes to infinity.\n",
"Compounding is the operation of bringing together all the ingre... |
what's up with the cern drama, what are they trying to do? | What CERN drama? I can find nothing significant about CERN in the news. Are you sure you didn't find a five year old fear-mongering website about how "oh the LHC will destroy the wooooorrrrlldddd!!!!1!" | [
"CERN brings to the community an opening on to the world of physics which is perhaps unique in the world. Conferences are very frequently organised and some of these are open to the public. It is possible to visit the exhibition centre at CERN and also, with a prior appointment, to make a half day visit to CERN its... |
why are modern superhero comics more darker than the classic ones? | The medium changes to fit the audience. A lot of the main audience were kids/young teens when they first started and now they've grown up and demand more mature content, which usually equals darker and grittier. It also seems to be what the average person wants these days, it's why the Batman movies got a super gritty reboot in The Dark Knight and why super dark action movies are all the rage. | [
"Superhero Comics became darker with the release of landmark deconstructive works such as \"Watchmen\" and \"The Dark Knight Returns\", which led to many imitations. In the 1990s, Image Comics released successful new characters including the anti-hero Spawn which were predominantly creator owned as opposed to Marve... |
the practices/beliefs of the jewish religion. | Judaism is a monotheistic religion - i.e., we believe in "One God", indivisible. The foundation of Judaism is found within the Torah (a.k.a. the old testament) wherein you will find every law (halachah) that a Jew must follow. These are referred to as "mitzvot". There are 613 Mitzvot.
These concern everything from dietary law, to dress, to marriage and death. A significant portion of mitzvot concern laws related to the Sabbath.
The hebrew calender is neither lunar nor solar. Technically, it is a combination of both. There are 13 months but sometimes there is a leap month.
Jews are huge on life cycle celebrations (birth, bar mitzvah, marriage, death) and have many, many holidays. There is only one Jewish month without a holiday.
The most important holidays are pesach (passover) and yom kippur (the high holy days refer to the 10 day period before yom kippur).
Passover commemorates the exodus from egypt (moses and the israelites) and Yom Kippur is the day of atonement - supposedly, when God writes in the book of life your fate for the following year (this is why you atone).
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"Jewish culture is the culture of the Jewish people from the formation of the Jewish nation in ancient Israel through life in the diaspora and the modern state of Israel. Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, so that it has been called not only a religion, but an orthopraxy. Not all individuals ... |
how can computers just be a whole bunch of "1's and 0's" when they can seemingly do many more things than that? | You are just a whole bunch of carbons, oxygens and hydrogens. But here you are reflecting on the nature of computers.
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"Computers usually manipulate bits in groups of a fixed size, conventionally named \"words\". Like the byte, the number of bits in a word also varies with the hardware design, and is typically between 8 and 80 bits, or even more in some specialized computers. In the 21st century, retail personal or server computers... |
the differences (jurisdictional, logistical, cooperative, etc) between law enforcement off and on an american indian reservation. | Kind of a broad topic, and hard to generalize as there are hundreds of reservations and each one is handled differently.
Tribes have a high level agreement with the federal government and another for the state they are in that says officers can come onto the reservation under special situations i.e. with a warrant, but for cases that don't fall under a predefined condition, they can request to be allowed on (i.e. to question someone) from the high council.
The council can also request police presence if things get out of hand.
In states, there are special courts that decide which jurisdiction should try the victim. For example, a special court may be consulted in custodial/visitation proceedings where a child has divorced parents where one of the parents is a native american. This is to ensure that child is exposed to both cultures if possible. | [
"American Indian reservations are areas of land managed by an American Indian tribe under the United States Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs. There are about 310 Indian reservations in the United States. Tribes possess limited tribal sovereignty over the land in their reservation. As a result, ... |
i read that heisenberg's uncertainty principle is often confused or conflated with the observer effect. if they aren't the same thing, then what is the uncertainty principle? | The uncertainty principle is a consequence wave mechanics. Take the probability density of a wave with a single well-defined frequency. That wave exists everywhere, so you can know the frequency but you have no idea of the location of a particle represented by that wavefunction. Any wave function that is localized (confined to a certain area) is going to contain many different frequencies. The extreme case is a delta function (particle is at exactly one location). The frequency space representation (Fourier transform) is uniform across all frequencies. Now you know the exact location but talking about the frequency (which can be expressed in terms of energy and momentum) doesn't make any sense. | [
"The uncertainty principle has been frequently confused with the observer effect, evidently even by its originator, Werner Heisenberg. The uncertainty principle in its standard form describes how precisely we may measure the position and momentum of a particle at the same time – if we increase the precision in meas... |
wanna cry malware and how a system acquires it. | Long story short, the ransomware utilises two main exploits in Windows systems, known as EternalBlue and DoublePulsar. These were leaked by a Russian hacker group known as 'The Shadow Brokers' in April this year and most likely originated with the NSA.
EternalBlue is a method of exploiting a legacy file transfer protocol in Windows known as 'Server Message Block' or SMB. EternalBlue can be used to install the DoublePulsar backdoor - which is a memory based payload that allows an attacker to execute virtually any malicious code they wish to.
Microsoft patched the vulnerabilities in 7 and 8 earlier this year, however neglected to do so for XP. As it happens, a number of government agencies (including Britain's NHS) still utilise XP and are vulnerable to the aforementioned exploits.
My understanding is that Wannacry utilises traditional phishing methods (e.g. fake emails) as an initial attack vector and then scans the local network for vulnerable machines to which it will remotely spread.
Its progress has currently been halted because one security researcher accidentally found a kill switch but that's another story entirely. | [
"Shedun-family malware is known for auto-rooting the Android OS using well-known exploits like ExynosAbuse, Memexploit and Framaroot (causing a potential privilege escalation) and for serving trojanized adware and install themselves within the system partition of the operating system, so that not even a factory res... |
How do deadly/immobilizing viruses like HIV remain prevalent if they cause their hosts to die? | viruses only have to "live" long enough to infect another host or hosts. What happens to the host after that is irrelevant. There's a positive correlation between virulence (how much damage the pathogen can cause) and infectivity (the ability of a pathogen to start new infections). Plenty of pathogens can spread to new hosts after the host has died.
As for HIV, it's moderately infective but not especially virulent. Even without any form of treatment, most people live for years, which is plenty of time to pass it on.
Also, not all pathogens can only be transmitted person to person. Many have natural reservoirs such other animals that act as hosts without getting sick. Ebola, for example, can be transmitted by bats, but the bats themselves do not get sick. | [
"Although viruses and other pathogens can be transmitted to cimicids, they rarely transmit them to their hosts. \"O. vicarius\" is a vector of several arboviruses, but is not killed by these viruses. \"Trypanosoma cruzi\", the trypanosome that causes Chagas disease, is rarely transmitted from cimicids to bats, but ... |
Was enslavement to North America the first instance of African slavery? If not, who was the first to enslave Africans? | No, and not by a long shot.
Africans (which of course is an extremely vague term encompassing thousands of ethnic groups who happen to occupy the same massive continent) have been getting enslaved at least since the time of the Roman Empire. Likewise, centuries before the discovery of the Americas, there existed a large scale slave trade between eastern Africa with the Muslim world and India. These slave exportations are in addition to the internal slave trade in Africa between the various kingdoms and tribes.
As for the Americas, North America was not the first place slaves were sent, nor was it the largest importer of African slaves. The colony of Brazil alone took in more slaves between 1500-1800 as did the entirety of North America. A similar number of slaves also ended up in the Caribbean working largely on sugar plantations. The Spanish mainland colonies relied much more heavily on the indigenous populations for labor, but African slaves nonetheless appeared there as well.
North American slavery followed this long history of African enslavement, and in some ways was worse than its predecessors. It has the distinction of being one of the few self-reproducing slave populations, allowing the number of enslaved individuals to increase through the generations even after the end of the slave trade. Chattel slavery was the norm, rather than a less common exception in North America, and it is possible to say the no one has ever developed a keener sense of racism than North American whites. But this was not nearly the start of African slavery, just a terrible evolution. | [
"Many Native American tribes practiced some form of slavery before the European introduction of African slavery into North America; but none exploited slave labor on a large scale. The arrival of the Europeans ushered in the Atlantic slave trade, where Africans were sold into chattel slavery into the American conti... |
why do some devices need huge, clunky transformers to go from ac to dc, while others (like usb) are just a tiny plug? | Transforming power from AC to DC is a relatively simple task if you only need a little bit of power. However, if you need lots of power then you start worrying about the amount of heat that you are producing.
Something like a USB plug is not going to have to supply more than a few watts. Such a device is never going to have to worry about how much heat it produces. However, something like a laptop power brick can provide over 100 W (mine is 135 W). The more power a device needs to draw the more power it has to waste as heat, generally. | [
"Compared to domestic AC power plugs and sockets, DC connectors have many more standard types that are not interchangeable. The dimensions and arrangement of DC connectors can be chosen to prevent accidental interconnection of incompatible sources and loads. Types vary from small coaxial connectors used to power po... |
is the universe loosing density? | Yes, this expansion will ultimately lead to heat death unless something happens in the interim. | [
"Milne proposed that the universe's density changes in time because of an initial outward explosion of matter. Milne's model assumes an inhomogeneous density function which is Lorentz Invariant (around the event t=x=y=z=0). When rendered graphically Milne's density distribution shows a three-dimensional spherical L... |
Why did Japan sign the plaza accords? | To answer my own question, I think it's because a stronger Yen allowed Japan to make important investments/purchases in the US. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. | [
"The Plaza Accord was signed between Japan, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, and the United States in 1985, aimed at reducing the imbalance in trade between the countries. At that time, Japan had a huge trade surplus, as the Japanese yen was weaker against U.S. dollar, while the United States suffered from... |
why we can't immunize against the bacteria that causes tooth cavities | First of all, I read that same post on Reddit and it's BS. Yes, you aren't *born* covered in bacteria but it's very true that you depend on bacteria to live. Bacteria are on your skin. They are in your intestines. If you're a girl, they are all up in your vagina as well. And while they can sometimes make you sick, some of them are quite helpful to you. Bacteria are ubiquitous in the environment and they will colonize you no matter what you do. Yes, you might get your mother's when she kisses you the first time but you also get covered in bacteria climbing through the birth canal. They are on practically everything you touch to the food you eat to the air you breathe.
No, you do not get cavities like communicable diseases. While they can cause some diseases (endocarditis, abscess, certain types of pneumonia under the right conditions, infections from being bitten by other humans) brushing your teeth works pretty well just as bathing does.
Developing vaccines against them would not only be a waste of resources it would do very little to prevent cavities since your immune system isn't protecting your teeth. When you brush/floss and you bleed, your immune system handles them just fine on its own unless you have certain risk factors--and those *do* get antibiotics before dental procedures. And if you do get sick, endocarditis or pneumonia or otherwise? We give you medicine.
You also have to keep in mind, what would the medicine do? Antibiotics are in you blood and the bacteria on your teeth are not. If you want to kill the bacteria, you brush your teeth, but they are just going to come right back. Also keep in mind that antibiotics don't just kill the bacterium you want--they kill lots of other bacteria, too. And when you kill off the good bacteria, really bad bacteria can take up residence in their place and make you sicker. Additionally, frivolous use of antibiotics also selects for drug resistant bacteria so not a good idea.
TLDR: Cavities are not communicable diseases. The bacteria that cause cavities are generally handled by your immune system just fine, but your immune system is not protecting your teeth. Brushing your teeth periodically to get rid of them is a better solution than medication in a similar fashion to bathing regularly. | [
"Research in the field of microbiotas shows that only a limited set of microbes cause tooth decay, with most of the bacteria in the human mouth being harmless. Focused attention on cavity-causing bacteria such as \"Streptococcus mutans\" has led research into new mouthwash treatments that prevent these bacteria fro... |
why can't reptiles regulate their bodyheat but mammals can? | Because they never evolved the necessary organs/glands/nervous system/bits and pieces to regulate body temperature. They've never needed because being cold-blooded does grant certain advantages in the environments that reptiles have evolved in. While dependent on ambient temperature, they possess a greater degree of control over their metabolic rates, which means they can better conserve energy during periods of hardship where food might be scarce. | [
"They also require a constant water source, for bathing and drinking. Being reptiles, which cannot control their body temperature internally, they require a varied area in which they can access both sun and shade. This allows them to move around and thus to regulate and maintain their body temperature constant.\n",... |
To what degree does stellar fusion occur in Black Holes? Are crazy elements formed? | We don't know *exactly* what is going on inside a Black hole, but it's less-compressed cousin is the 'neutron star' which is completely composed of neutrons.
In a neutron star, the neutrons are compressed so closely that they literally cannot get any closer (to do so would mean that multiple neutrons are occupying the same space, which cannot happen due to the Pauli exclusion principle) so no fusion can occur without the element breaking back down into neutrons (or if you want to think about it this way, the whole star is one massive atom, except held together by gravity, not nuclear forces.)
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"Brown dwarf stars and gas-giant planets do not achieve sustained fusion, as they contain insufficient mass to gravitationally compress the reactants to the degree required to initiate a reaction. If the density of the star or planet could be increased, fusion could be initiated. One such method is to \"seed\" the ... |
anthropic selection | I will explain with another question:
"Why do we only get motivational speakers who overcame cancer, rather than those who didn't?"
Obviously you don't because people who died from cancer can't attend speaking engagements. This is the basic idea behind the anthropic principle, the idea that observations of the universe must be compatible with the existence of the entities making the observation. For example we can never observe that the development of life is impossible because then we wouldn't exist to make that observation | [
"Apostatic selection is a form of negative frequency-dependent selection. It describes the survival of individual prey animals that are different (through mutation) from their species in a way that makes it more likely for them to be ignored by their predators. It operates on polymorphic species, species which have... |
Will cryogenically frozen people ever wake up? | You might look at the [FAQ at Alcor](_URL_1_), and the [FAQ for scientists](_URL_0_) at the same source.
They don't freeze people these days: the process used is vitrification, which minimizes ice crystal formation when performed under ideal circumstances. Fine structure in the brain is preserved. The same would be expected of some plastination techniques, but for various historical reasons those are not used by the community interested in preserving themselves for future revival.
An interesting reference is the ongoing Brain Preservation Foundation technology prize initiative:
_URL_2_
The two current competitors for the BPF technology prize, cryonics spin-off technology company 21st Century Medicine and collaborating scientists in the Max Planck Institute and other research centers, recently put out updates on their progress. You can see images of preserved brain tissue at the BPF website, created with the quite different technologies used by the two teams:
Our first team, led by Shawn Mikula (working in the laboratory of Winfried Denk at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg), has developed a whole mouse brain chemical preservation and plastic embedding technique. ... As part of the Brain Preservation Technology Prize competition, Dr. Mikula has agreed to demonstrate the quality of ultrastructure preservation which his protocol can achieve.
21st Century Medicine's main research has been focused on the cryopreservation of transplantable organs (kidney, heart) and toward decreasing the toxicity of the process to such organs. However, as part of the Brain Preservation Technology Prize competition, they have agreed to demonstrate the quality of ultrastructure preservation that their low temperature vitrification technique can achieve when applied to whole rabbit brains.
_URL_3_ | [
"Cryonics procedures can begin only after clinical death, and cryonics \"patients\" are legally dead. Cryonics procedures ideally begin within minutes of death, and use cryoprotectants to prevent ice formation during cryopreservation. It is however not possible for a corpse to be reanimated after undergoing vitrifi... |
why do so many coups occur in africa? | Development is going to be the primary cause.
The main reason countries fall behind in development is political instability. Economic growth comes from investing in the future, and that requires people to believe in the future. If thugs, criminal or government, are going to just take whatever you produce, your focus isn't building for the future, it is surviving until tomorrow. That leaves a country stuck in poverty it has little hope of escaping. | [
"There was a recurring pattern of coups and counter-coups, that were a succession of increasingly authoritarian and corrupt governments all full of false promises of democracy and new starts. ‘Decalo lists the following reasons for African military coups: ethnic rivalries, intramilitary quarrels, personal jealousie... |
what exactly is vector data in the context of gis? | There are two types of data in gis: raster and vector. Basically, raster is represented by pixels which have a different value and are continuous so an entire map will be taken up by these pixels. Vector data is comprised of points, lines, and polygons. Which might be a road, a tree, or a lake for example. With raster data there is no empty space; there are pixels on every space of the map and the number of pixels will depend on the map resolution. Vector data does have empty space between the features. Vector data would be more useful for a topographic map displaying features like roads (more useful for the average person). Raster data would be more useful for environmental workers or mining companies (stuff like soil maps). | [
"GIS data represents real objects (such as roads, land use, elevation, trees, waterways, etc.) with digital data determining the mix. Real objects can be divided into two abstractions: discrete objects (e.g., a house) and continuous fields (such as rainfall amount, or elevations). Traditionally, there are two broad... |
Himmler diaries, any updates? | I'm waiting for those myself, but yes, it takes a huge amount of time to analyze every single entry - you have not only to comment, you have to cross-reference the diaries (actually, appointment calendars) with tens of thousands of other documents. And we're talking about at least two whole years here -1943 and 1944 (the diaries for 1940, 1941 and 1942 had been published "officially" previously, and some earlier years were published online by David Irving).
It's been only 3 years since the discovery and it's a pretty short amount of time for work of such magnitude.
About the "vile and sickening excerpts " - don't expect those in the dry and practical notes (mostly lists of places visited and people met) by Himmler. The media of course got everything wrong and simply confused the long-ago available testimonies with diary entries. Some journalists seemingly can't hold two simple thoughts at once in their heads. We exposed the confusion here: [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)
Here is how a typical entry will look like (this one is about his visit to the extermination camp Sobibor - which he doesn't even mention by name):
> 12 Uhr: Landung Lublin; Abholung durch SS-Obergruppenführer Krüger und SS-Gruppenführer Globocnik; Essen im Flughafen-Hotel
>
> 12.30 Uhr: Start mit Wagen nach Cholm
>
> 14 Uhr: Start von Cholm mit Sonderzug zum SS-Sonderkommando
>
> 15-16 Uhr: Besichtigung des SS-Sonderkommandos
Very interesting for historians, but maybe not so much for the general public.
Anyway, the publication date is listed on the German Amazon as April, 2020.
[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)
The book will be called *Die Organisation des Massenmordes: Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1943-1945*.
(The 1945 diary has also already been published.) | [
"The 16 pages of photographs include those of Ivan Klimenko, head of autopsy commission Faust Shkaravsky, the locations of Hitler's burning and burying site outside the \"Führerbunker\"s emergency exit, SMERSH agents exhuming Hitler and Braun's remains, a diagram of where the corpses of Hitler, Braun, Joseph and Ma... |
Did Mitterand give Thatcher codes to disable Argentina's Exocet missiles during the Falklands War in exchange for chunnel? | The claim originates from Ali Magoudi's 2005 book *Rendez-vous: La psychanalyse de François Mitterrand.* Magoudi was Mitterrand's psychoanalyst between 1982 and 1984 and published the book several years after Mitterrand's death. So, there's the obvious ethical issues with a therapist spilling the beans on his patient's private sessions. Since he was dead, Mitterrand obviously never had the chance to respond to any of the book's claims.
Magoudi claims Mitterrand said about his conversation with Thatcher on May 7, 1982:
> "What an impossible woman. She's threatening to unleash an atomic weapon against Argentina if I don't provide her with the secret codes that will make the missiles we sold the Argentinians deaf and blind. [I gave them to her, rather than] provoke a nuclear war for a few islands inhabited by three sheep as hairy as they are freezing."
From there, Magoudi claims Mitterrand was going to get "revenge" by building a tunnel under the Channel and that he boasted, I'll succeed where Napoleon III failed."
There are, of course, some problems with Magoudi's claims:
1. No British politicians, diplomats, or military officers have ever mentioned the nuclear threat or the existence of the codes.
2. No French politicians, diplomats, or military officers have ever mentioned the nuclear threat or the existence of the codes.
3. The Chunnel quid pro quo makes no sense. Conservative government had been considering a tunnel scheme since 1979. In 1981, a year before the Falklands War, Thatcher and Mitterrand had begun seriously studying the Chunnel scheme. Both were enthusiastic about the idea and had strong domestic and foreign reasons to support the project. It wasn't something Mitterrand forced down Maggie's throat.
4. If the British had the codes, they don't seem to have used them. *Atlantic Conveyer* was traveling with an escort of warships, but was still hit on May 25. *HMS Glamorgan* was hit by a land-launched Exocet as last as 12 June.
5. The British were still planning extremely risky anti-Exocet operations well after May 7. Operation Mikado, a nearly suicidal plan for an SAS raid on Argentine airbases wasn't scrubbed until late May. Hazardous pre-raid reconnaissance missions (Operation Plum Duff) were carried out in mid-May by heliborne SAS detachments. It seems unlikely British commanders would have done these things if they had cheat codes in their pocket in early May.
Bottom line. It's very, very unlikely the story is true. | [
"In 1982 there was a failed plan codenamed Operation Algeciras conceived by the Argentinian military to sabotage the British military facilities in Gibraltar during the Falklands War. The Spanish authorities intervened just before the attack, and deported the two Argentine Montoneros and military liaison officer in... |
What was the relation between the different Archaic Greek poetries? | (Forewarning: I really didn't intend to write anything this long! I apologise, I got carried away. Skip to the last paragraph for the actual answer to your question.)
We have little evidence on performance circumstances of any genre of poetry prior to the 5th century BCE, and prior to the late 6th century it's practically non-existent. So anything we say about Alcman or Homer or Hesiod is almost entirely conjecture -- and mostly based on depictions of poets taken from the poets themselves, so there's likely to be a certain amount of idealising.
Unfortunately, it's those poetic depictions that are mostly responsible for the stereotypes you see about rhapsodes wandering around and performing in nobles' halls. They give us the numerous poetry scenes in the *Odyssey*, Achilleus kitharoidising in *Iliad* 9, and Hesiod travelling to Chalkis to win a poetry competition. Bearing in mind that Homeric poetry is self-consciously archaising, it's very hard to put any stock at all in the Homeric references; and the Hesiod reference doesn't tell us much beyond the fact that poetry competitions existed, and that they carried a certain amount of prestige.
It'd be hard to establish the claim that Hesiod and Homer were intended for different audiences; even the thing about different value systems seems to be an invention of ancient literary critics: it was very early -- it goes back at least as far as Alkidamas' version of the *Contest of Homer and Hesiod* in the ~~mid-late 5th~~ 4th century BCE, and perhaps Herodotos 2.53 -- but it's still artificial. The categorisation holds up beautifully if you focus on just the *Iliad* and the *Works and Days* as archetypes of the two genres. But if you add in all the other poems that were assigned to each poet by the 5th century, it becomes very hard to draw a line between two "genres".
You probably already know that the 6th/5th century Greeks divided up pretty much all hexameter poems assigned them to either "Homer" or "Hesiod", without much interest in actual authorship. This means that the two poets' names are not just fictional personas, they're not even supposed to be *authors*: instead, they're more like *labels*. "Hesiod" also had the *Shield* and the *Catalogue of Women* attributed to him, which are both chock-full of "Homeric" stock motifs and formulae; "Homer" had the *Hymns* attributed to him, which are all about the relationship between the mortal and divine realms (much closer to the *Theogony* than anything in the *Iliad*!), and the *Margites*, which was a semi-comic poem in alternating hexameter and iambic lines.
If you draw a line with "heroic narrative" at one end and "non-narrative" at the other end, you can just about separate the poems into "Hesiodic" and "Homeric" poems, but most of the spectrum is taken up by "Hesiod" (the *Shield* is very, very Homeric in style, if not in quality!); if you add more dimensions, it becomes hard to see any distinction at all between them. There seem to have been groups of poets, aligned with one or the other of the two, who appropriated various poems to themselves (we know there was a group of Homeridai based on Chios, and there are hints at some kind of Hesiodic heritage being transmitted in Boiotia); so really "Homer" and "Hesiod" aren't so much names for distinct *genres* as for distinct *cultural heritages*. (It may even be that the names are inventions for this purpose (Richard Janko interprets "Homer" as ὁμ(οιο) + ἀραρίσκω "fitter", and Gregory Nagy interprets "Hesiod" as ἵη(μι) + ὁδός ("sent on the path (of song)"; cf. *W & D* 659 "he who sends forth song"), but those are conjectural.)
So some modern interpreters have looked for other ways of maintaining some kind of generic distinctness -- without success, I think.
* Andrew Ford rejects the "Homer vs. Hesiod" opposition, but accepts that there was a category of wisdom literature that got identified with Hesiod.
* Rainer Friedrich sees Homer as being about elevation, taking mundane material and transfiguring it into the sublime; I don't know what he thinks about Hesiod though.
* Jonathan Burgess rejects "Homer vs. Hesiod" and opts for "epic vs. didactic" instead -- but then goes on to equate "epic" with "Homeric", so we're back to square one.
* Others, like William Thalmann, Laura Slatkin, and Jenny Clay, see hexameter poetry as a whole thing, which is unified in some way or other; but they're generally hesitant to clarify where exactly this unity lies.
* Probably the most popular point of view among the literary critics: that the big two "Homeric" epics have something special about them that sets them apart from all other hexameter poetry. This idea is espoused in one form or another by Gregory Nagy, Margalit Finkelberg, Jasper Griffin, Norman Austin, and others.
OK, so much for Homer and Hesiod: this has got us away from your question about patronage and "wandering rhapsodes". The answer to that is, I think, mercifully short: the distinction between hexameter poets and lyric poets that you cite is just a stereotype, nothing more. *Almost all* poets participated in festivals and competitions of one sort or another. It's very likely that all genres, except choral, were performed in symposiac contexts (and for the Dark Age you can imagine a nobleman's feasthall as a precursor to the symposion if you like). On your last question (would Alcman perform Homer?): a recent book by Timothy Power draws a distinction between *kitharōidia* and *rhapsōidia*, arguing that anyone could "kitharise" (i.e. perform poetry of any genre in the comfort of their own home), while being a rhapsode was more a professional vocation. If that's right, then Alcman could kitharise (just like anyone else), but he couldn't rhapsodise because that just wasn't his line of work. As to what Alcman would do if he was temporarily without a patron -- I imagine he'd take a short break back at his estate and compose a few new songs while waiting for the next festival to come round, and then he'd go job-hunting at the festival. (Rather like an academic going to a conference, really.) | [
"Modern surveys of \"Greek lyric\" often include relatively short poems composed for similar purposes or circumstances that were not strictly \"song lyrics\" in the modern sense, such as elegies and iambics. The Greeks themselves did not include elegies nor iambus within melic poetry, since they had different metre... |
how is music able to be unevenly distributed through headphones? | So others have mentioned that this is called stereo sound, and no it doesn't have to be programmed. There is one channel for each headphone, so each ear is getting slightly different audio (surround sound works similarly, there are just more channels).
When mixing, each input (microphone or instrument input) can be panned, meaning you are sending different levels of the signal to the right and left channels. Because our brains locate sounds based in part on the difference in volume received by each ear, the stereo effect makes it seem like that instrument or voice is coming from a certain direction. It is one of the ways to create separation in a mix. The effect is more pronounced when wearing headphones because the speakers are angled wider than say the speakers in your car.
Also, there are stereo recording techniques that are used to create the stereo effect. These are used often when recording ensembles (such as a choir or orchestra) as well as grand pianos or acoustic guitars (in certain circumstances). These techniques use two microphones on the source instead of one. The left microphone is panned hard left and the right microphone is panned hard right. This attempts to recreate what it would sound like if you were actually present. | [
"Conventional music recording is produced for stereo playback which makes use of only Left and Right playback for speakers and headphones. The implementation of Dummy Head allows the recording artist to make use of three dimensional sound reproduction. This is because through playback via headphones the listener pe... |
why do our stomachs 'get full' based on the mass of the food we eat, rather than the food's calorie content? | Actually appetite is controlled by *both* of these things. If you eat something bulky but low in calories, you'll be hungry again in two hours. And if you eat something extremely rich, as long as you take your time, you'll feel satisfied before your stomach is actually filled up. | [
"Due to the high volume or water content of fiber-rich foods, fiber displaces available calories and nutrients from the diet. Consumption of viscous fibers delays gastric emptying, which may cause an extended feeling of fullness. Satiety is also induced by increasing chewing, which limits food intake by promoting t... |
how come atms spit out crisp dollar bills when people put in wrinkle money? | the ironing elves.
(all of the money that goes into an ATM is collected and processes. all money that comes out is put in "freshly" by the ATM armored truck dudes) | [
"A scrip cash dispenser may have many components in common with an ATM, but it lacks the ability to dispense physical cash and consequently requires no vault. Instead, the customer requests a withdrawal transaction from the machine, which prints a receipt or scrip. The customer then takes this receipt to a nearby s... |
American Presidential Historians, what were the most fascinating bits of the Truman era? | Truman very much struggled with the decision to drop the Atomic bombs, and refused to give into pressure to drop a third bomb. It's something interesting with fairly easy access to material. Of course you also have the development of the Truman doctrine, and could look into US aid to assist the Greeks in their civil war. Truman has seen his legacy looked upon with kindness with each increasing year and he is regarded by most now as being one of the best American Presidents ( and I believe the most recent one to make the top 10 scholarly list).
edit: I lied apparently Eisenhower is the most recent | [
"In August 1949, Leviero wrote for the \"Times Magazine\" about the presidential press conference, calling it \"a great institution\" that had become \"a factor in our checks-and-balances system of government. Nothing anywhere else in the world compares with it.\" In a book about Truman's relationship to the news m... |
how can boats have holes in the bottom to drop things into the ocean? | They are kept afloat by other sections that *don't* have holes in them. Think of a twin-hulled catamaran: the whole middle is a giant hole, but each of the two closed hulls still floats.
| [
"Holes, or \"hydraulics\", (also known as \"stoppers\" or \"souse-holes\". See also Pillows), are formed when water pours over the top of a submerged object, or underwater ledges, causing the surface water to flow back upstream toward the object. Holes can be particularly dangerous—a boater may become stuck under t... |
why is it important to search for methane on mars? is methane actually present on mars? | Methane is a by product of life on Earth. If found on Mars it could indicate that there is life. | [
"The 2003–2004 observations of methane gas on Mars were made remotely by three teams working with separate data. If the methane is truly present in the atmosphere of Mars, then something must be producing it on the planet now, because the gas is broken down by radiation on Mars within 300 years, therefore the impor... |
How would the contagiousness (R0) of seasonal flu compare to COVID-19 virus, if nobody was immune to flu either? | In the H1N1 pandemic of 2009/10, no one was immune to the new H1N1 virus (which is why it caused a pandemic). Its R0 was estimated as between 1 and 2 (for example, see [The Transmissibility and Control of Pandemic Influenza A (H1N1) Virus](_URL_0_)). | [
"The virus is contagious and is believed to spread from human to human in much the same way as seasonal flu. The most common mechanisms by which it spreads are by droplets from coughs and sneezes of infected people, and also potentially touching a surface or the hand of a person contaminated with the virus and then... |
Slave culture in the caribbean - can anyone recommend some reliable sources? | There are many on here who have more expertise in the later 18th century Caribbean than I, but I do know a few sources that you could consult.
The first issue you will confront is that there is a dearth of sources from enslaved people's point of view at any time during the eighteenth century. Olaudah Equiano's narrative is a rare example of a literate ex-slave writing about his experiences (whether he was born in Africa or not is beside the point for this question; he was enslaved and labored in the Carolinas and Montserrat, - *ODNB Online*). For the most part, you will be stuck with the sources left by whites in Jamaica, and have to "read against the grain". For historians, that means extracting information from source that was not the original intent of its creator.
For example, one of the most common sources for slave culture is runaway advertisements. Douglas Chambers has retyped and assembled 740 advertisements from Jamaican newspapers between 1718 and 1795 [here](_URL_2_). There is an incredible amount of information given in these sorts of advertisements - names of family memebers, any skilled trades they practiced, if they could or could not speak English, and occasionally if they played a musical instrument. The list goes on. But in using a source like this, some students or writers fall into the trap of adopting the language of the slave master - they will frequently try and take titles away from the slave, such as Abraham, who "pretends to be an Obeah-Man and Doctor" (p. 103). From this description, it seems that Abraham was born in Africa, and was brought up to be a healer of some kind (for another example of this kind of person and their importance to enslaved and free African communities, see James Sweet, *Domingos Alvares*). Advertisers and slave owners will also claim the slaves are perpetually drunk ("is very much given to excessive drinking" p. 120). Surely the slaves enjoyed alcohol when they had access, but be wary of taking the slave owners at their word. We can also see some of the brutality of slavery in the descriptions of some of the enslaved as "branded" or "scars on \[their\] back from flogging."
Another major source for slavery in eighteenth century Jamaica is the diary of Thomas Thistlewood. There is an edited down version by Douglas Hall, [*In Miserable Slavery*](_URL_1_)*.* It is a very abbreviated version, and the original is online through Yale University [here](_URL_0_), but the text can be difficult to read. Thistlewood covers everything, from the truly horrific (rape is a common element in Thistlewood's life) to the mundane and everyday of planter's and their slaves in Jamaica.
There are some letters published from a slave factor in Jamaica, Simon Taylor for the period 1765-1775 (Wood, *Travel, Trade, and Power in the Atlantic, 1765-1884*)
Some secondary works worth considering are Burnard, *Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire*; Brown, *The Reaper's Garden*; Dunn, *A Tale of Two Plantations*, Higman, *Slave Population and Economy, 1807-1834*, and Campbell, *The Maroons of Jamaica*.
Hope this gives you a jumping off point! | [
"\"The Autobiography of a Slave\" is the only existing documented account of 19th century Cuban Slavery and the only existing narrative account of slavery in Spanish America. Irish abolitionist Richard Robert Madden published his \"Poems by a slave in the island of Cuba\" in 1840. Manzano's play \"Zafira\" was publ... |
if computers have been able to win at chess for years, why did it take them this long to win at go? | You answered your own question. Go is considered to be the pinnacle of strategy games, because while it's instructions are easier than chess, there is much skill and little luck involved in winning at higher levels, which the number of options are far larger than chess in the early and mid stages of the game. | [
"Chess computers were first able to beat strong chess players in the late 1980s. Their most famous success was the victory of Deep Blue over then World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, but there was some controversy over whether the match conditions favored the computer.\n",
"Computer scientists believed th... |
why do we have to separate paper from plastics, glass, and metals when recycling? | Because glass is melted and paper is turned into liquid pulp. Can't recycle them together during the same process, and recycling is expensive enough without paying some poor worker to separate them for you. | [
"Plastic recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste plastics and reprocessing the material into useful products. Compared to glass or metallic materials, plastic poses unique challenges. Because of the massive number of types of plastic, they each carry a resin identification code, and must be sorted bef... |
How do Islamic writings of the Trans-Saharan Slave trade routes in Africa compare to those of the Western writings of the Atlantic Slave Trade? | > I'm interested to hear what people with actual credentials say about the historiography of slavery.
Yes, this is a necessary step of any historical research project! Ideally, a major history paper (although I don't know about the specifics of your particular assignment) includes a section at the beginning that discusses what earlier scholarship has said about the topic of your paper, or about things related to your topic. So you might have a section about "what scholars think about Europeans describing the early modern Atlantic slave trade" and one about "what scholars think about Arab Muslims describing the medieval/early modern trans-Saharan slave trade"--unless you can find a good amount of comparative work. (Which--maybe that *is* out there; you'd have to find it).
To find previous works of scholarship with "actual credentials"--that is, books and articles that have gone through a peer review process to ensure the authors have some basis in source material and have put forth a logical argument based on them--you would use your school library and online databases/search engines like Google Scholar, JSTOR, ProQuest, depending on what your school has access to. (JSTOR seems to be pretty standard in the U.S. now, but I don't know about elsewhere). Then you would read the books and articles that look promising.
What databases and searches have you tried, that haven't been productive for you yet? | [
"Early Muslim writings confirm that the people of West Africa operated a sophisticated network of trade, usually under the authority of a monarch who levied taxes and provided bureaucratic and military support to his kingdom. Sophisticated mechanisms for the economic and political development of the involved Africa... |
- how the dial lock on a safe works. | Im too lazy to find pics. Imagine a pizza on a table. Stand the pizza on its edge. Remove one slice from the pizza. Place a metal bar above the pizza. Now as you rotate the pizza the metal bar will fall into the pizza when the missing section is aligned with the bar. Now imagine you had 2 pizzas with 1 piece missing each. The bar will only fall when both empty sections align with the bar. The more pizzas you have the more pizzas you have to turn to get the bar to align with all the missing sections.
& nbsp;
Now theres also a nub behind and in front of each pizza. When you rotate a pizza, the nub on the back of one pizza will eventually touch the nub on the pizza behind it. So you start by rotating right a bunch of times so that each nub on the back of each pizza is touching the nub on the front of the pizza behind it. Lets pretend we have 3 pizzas so we turn the dial 3 times to the right to make sure all 3 pizzas are engaged. When you land on the first number in the sequence the back most pizza is aligned properly. Now we turn to the left 2 times so that we reengage the first and second pizza. Once we land on the proper number the second pizza is in place. So we do 1 full turn to the right to renegage just the 1st pizza until we land on our final number. Now the empty spaces on each pizza are aligned and the metal bar falls. Once the metal bar falls the safe is unlocked.
& nbsp;
TLDnR: locks are made out of pizzas. | [
"Mechanical safe locks are manipulated primarily by feel and vision, with sound helping the process occasionally. To find the combination the operator uses the lock against itself by measuring internal movements with the dial numbers. More sophisticated locks use advanced mechanics to reduce any feedback a technici... |
Do less attractive people tend to be more kind, and very attractive ones less so? | I found this abstract of an [article](_URL_0_):
> Common maxims about beauty suggest that attractiveness is not important in life. In contrast, both fitness-related evolutionary theory and socialization theory suggest that attractiveness influences development and interaction. In 11 meta-analyses, the authors evaluate these contradictory claims, demonstrating that (a) raters agree about who is and is not attractive, both within and across cultures; (b) attractive children and adults are judged more positively than unattractive children and adults, even by those who know them; (c) attractive children and adults are treated more positively than unattractive children and adults, even by those who know them; and **(d) attractive children and adults exhibit more positive behaviors and traits than unattractive children and adults**. Results are used to evaluate social and fitness-related evolutionary theories and the veracity of maxims about beauty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)
I do not have full text access, but this might contradict your intuition. I am not a psychologist, and quite busy, so I hope someone with more knowledge on this will expand. | [
"Many have asserted that certain advantages tend to come to those who are perceived as being more attractive, including the ability to get better jobs and promotions; receiving better treatment from authorities and the legal system; having more choices in romantic or platonic partners and, therefore, more power in ... |
why do some people cut most of a dog's ears off? | Cropping the ears used to be for working dogs, and unfortunately for fighting dogs. Now it's more for breed standards and stupid owners. | [
"German Pinschers previously had their tails docked and ears cropped in countries where the procedures are legal. Historically, tail docking was thought to prevent rabies, strengthen the back, increase the animal's speed, and prevent injuries when working. Ears also were cropped, as they were thought to prevent inj... |
why do tv shows and films often have their characters using fake social media websites/search engines on screen? | It is considered advertising and there are a few reason they avoid it.
1) It being advertising they want to be paid for it. Most will not pay so they make imitation products. It is the same reason they invent soda or beer brands, and why apple computers will have the apple logo covered or altered.
2) If the product is being shown in a negative like they open themselves up to lawsuit. | [
"Due to the show's format, impersonated celebrities are usually female, although there have been several instances of contestants choosing male celebrities whose public images were sufficiently flamboyant to fit in with a drag aesthetic; one contestant also chose to create the character of a male public figure's im... |
Can something be too cold to burn? | Former US Navy trained firefighter here.
This is exactly how water extinguishes a fire.
There are four components to fire: fuel, oxidizer, heat, and a chemical chain reaction. Remove any one of those components, and the fire goes out.
Water extinguishes fire by absorbing heat, cooling the fuel to a temperature below its combustion point.
Blowing out a match or candle works the same way: it cools the fuel to below the combustion point.
Carbon Dioxide displaces air, getting rid of the oxygen. It also provides some cooling, but usually not enough to be effective by itself--it's the displacement of air/oxygen that extinguishes the fire.
We fight forest fires by depriving them of fuel.
Dry chemical and Halon extinguishers break up the chemical chain reaction, causing the fire to go out.
Firefighting foam creates a layer on top of liquid fuels, sealing out air.
Stomping a cigarette butt breaks up the fuel into smaller pieces, which are consumed before the fire can spread to fresh tobacco. It also displaces oxygen.
| [
"Treating an object with heat is a method used to disinfect objects by either an oven or a commercial kiln. When the internal temperature reaches “130°F for three hours it will kill any insect”; however, this kind of heat can damage veneer, damage finish of specimens, warp lumber, or melt glues.\n",
"A thermal bu... |
why is the diamond pattern used so much on metal plate? | It's cheap / it's rugged/ it's got grip/ and it looks bad ass. Perfection | [
"Diamond plate, also known as checker plate, tread plate and Durbar floor plate, is a type of metal stock with a regular pattern of raised diamonds or lines on one side, with the reverse side being featureless. Diamond plate is usually steel, stainless steel or aluminum. Steel types are normally made by hot rolling... |
What truth is there for the ferocity of indigenous American tribes in torture and execution. | There is certainly some truth to it. The most horrific example I know of is the alleged death of Lt. Thomas Boyd during the American War of Independence.
Boyd was part of the Sullivan Expedition, one of the United States' largest military campaigns of 1779.
He was captured by the Seneca Indians. Following a bought of psychological torture:
*A quote from "SULLIVAN'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE IROQUOIS; BEING A FULL ACCOUNT OF THAT EPOCH OF THE REVOLUTION", by A. TIFFANY NORTON*
> They then pulled out Boyd's nails, cut off his nose and ears, enlarged his mouth with a knife and thrust into it the severed nose, cut out his tongue, forced out one of his eyes, and stabbed him in several places. As if this were not enough they now unbound him from the tree, and making a small incision in his abdomen a severed intestine was fastened to the tree. Then by sheer brute force he was driven around the tree until his entrails were literally wound upon its trunk.
Pretty awful.
**HOWEVER** -- The Sullivan Expedition was a scorched-earth campaign of ethnic cleansing to punish the native allies of the British government. To quote a report attributed to Sullivan:
> The number of towns destroyed by this army amounted to 40 besides scattering houses. The quantity of corn destroyed, at a moderate computation, must have amounted to 160,000 bushels, with a vast quantity of vegetables of every kind. Every creek and river has been traced, and the whole country explored in search of Indians settlements, and I am well persuaded that, except one town situated near the Allegana, about 50 miles from Chinesee there is not a single town left in the country of the Five nations.
(*Journals of the Military Expedition of Major General John Sullivan against the Six Nations of Indians 1779*, Frederick Cook, editor, 1887, p. 303. As quoted in *Founding Myths: Stories that Hide Our Patriotic Past* by Ray Raphael, 2014)
This act of torture and execution was certainly not unprovoked. (Also, look at the name of that book: "Military Expedition . . . against the Six Nations of Indians 1779". Two out of those Six, the Oneida and the Tuscarora were *allies* of the Continental Army! Only the Seneca, Onondaga, Mohawk, and Cayuga were allies of the British government.)
The nacent United States and the Native Americans did absolutely horrible things to each other in their fights for conquest and survival, respectively.
While horrific torture and executions almost certainly occurred, one should see most accounts of them for what they are -- propaganda designed to dehumanize an enemy to make ethnic cleansing acceptable to the Anglo-American reader.
Sources:
[The quoted history book, in the public domain.](_URL_0_)
[Wikipedia article giving context to Boyd's capture](_URL_1_)
My knowledge of the account of this execution comes from local folklore in Western New York. I had to go in search of a citation. I haven't found primary sources yet, so please take it with a grain of salt.
Most of my actual knowledge of the historical context of the Sullivan Expedition comes from *Founding Myths* by Ray Raphael, which I just finished. | [
"Indians who felt wronged would then indiscriminately kill Hispanic persons, sometimes first subjecting them to torture, and would conduct or participate in raids and ambushes whose goal was retaliation/revenge more than economic gain. Over the two centuries of interaction with the Spanish the Apache bands had acqu... |
Are the secret doors, complex puzzle locks, deadly traps, and other ancient mechanisms that we see in movies based in reality? | There are some very old stories about actual traps. One of the most famous is the claim that [the tomb of the Qin Emperor had crossbow traps](_URL_0_). At present excavation of what is strongly believed to be the site is ongoing but very slowly, due to among other issues extremely high mercury levels. I don't know of any confirmed reports of any traps there. | [
"Hidden trapdoors occasionally appear in fiction, as entrances to secret passageways, dungeons, or to secret tunnels. They also appear as literal traps into which a hapless pedestrian may fall if he or she happens to step on one.\n",
"Other rooms include the casino, where creatures gamble for either pleasure or t... |
why do so many different types of animals have whiskers? i understand their uses, but how did so many creatures evolve to have them? | They didn't all evolve them separately. Every mammal that has whiskers is descended from an ancestor that had whiskers. | [
"Animals that do not whisk, but have motile whiskers, presumably also gain some advantage from the investment in musculature. Dorothy Souza, in her book \"Look What Whiskers Can Do\" reports some whisker movement during prey capture (in cats, in this case):\n",
"Animal tails are used in a variety of ways. They pr... |
how did countries joining the euro & issuing euro bonds change the bond markets in countries like greece? | this is just an illusion. it doesn't change the bond market.
What it does change is the expectation of risk:
PIGG country = notional risk = higher returns.
BUT
Euro = bailout = no risk.
so for the banks we move from high risk high returns, to no risk high return.
Capitalism at it's best.
| [
"Foreseeing a possible sovereign default in the eurozone, the general public, international and European institutions, and the financial community reassessed the economic situation and creditworthiness of some Eurozone member states, in particular Southern countries. Consequently, sovereign bonds yields of several ... |
Why were the conflicts in Northern Ireland not considered a civil war? | This is a more complex question than it might appear. Given that the majority of the victims and perpetrators of the violence came from NI you might assume it was a civil war. There are some reasons for not using the term:
Politically it is rejected by Republicans because it turns the emphasis away from the Irish - British dimension. Therefore it is a loaded term. On the other side British and Unionist politicians avoid the word war as it could be see to legitimise the IRA.
Historians describe the conflict of 1922-23 as the Irish Civil War so tend not to use the term to avoid confusion.
The Northern Irish conflict was highly localised within a small part of the population and territory of the region. The majority of people were not engaged in it which is what "civil war" suggests. You do see terms like "quasi civil war".
Overall it is a debatable subject and you could use the term but you might have to spend a lot of time justifying it.
Sources
Paul Dixon, *Northern Ireland: the politics of war and peace* (2008)
Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, *The origins of the present troubles in Northern Ireland* (2014)
Fran Brearton, 'Poetry and the Northern Ireland "troubles" in A. Piette & M. Rawlinson (eds), *The Edinburgh companion to Twentieth Century British and American war literature* (2012)
| [
"The fact that the Irish Civil War was fought between Irish Nationalist factions meant that the sporadic conflict in Northern Ireland ended. Collins and Sir James Craig signed an agreement to end it on 30 March 1922, but, despite this, Collins covertly supplied arms to the Northern IRA until a week before his death... |
The Development of Democracy? | Although it is credited with the ancient Athenians, democracy in a broad sence, is believed to have already been practiced by several other lesser civilizations and tribes. A widely accepted theory is that in any close knit tribe where the community knows each other, that democracy will naturally form. This is tribalism. This system usually has some sort of discussion where elders with respected opinions would make decisions. | [
"A majority of researchers on the determinants of democracy agree that economic development is a primary factor which allows the formation of a stable and healthy democracy (, ). Thus, some researchers have argued that economic development also plays a factor in the establishment of peace.\n",
"Extensive research... |
when does mass murder become genocide? | It's not a question of numbers, either absolute or relative.
Genocide is the systematic attempt to exterminate a group of people based upon some shared characteristic, for example religion, skin colour, or nationality.
That's why even though Stalin ended up killing more people than Hitler, most historians don't consider Stalin's actions to be genocidal, "merely" murderous. | [
"A mass killing, as defined by a genocide scholar Ervin Staub, is \"killing members of a group without the intention to eliminate the whole group or killing large numbers of people without a precise definition of group membership\". This term is used by a number of genocide scholars because the term \"genocide\" (i... |
why do so many english native speakers use double negation when it's grammatically incorrect ? | Double negation is not grammatically incorrect. ( < --- see what I did there?)
It might sound strange and it's often used incorrectly, but it's grammatically fine.
"We don't need no education," is grammatically correct and can be parsed to mean that we require at least the smallest possible amount of education. What most people **mean**, however, when they use a double negative is often incorrect. | [
"Double negation is uncommon in other West Germanic languages. A notable exception is Afrikaans, where it is mandatory (for example, \"He cannot speak Afrikaans\" becomes \"Hy kan nie Afrikaans praat nie\", \"He cannot Afrikaans speak not\"). Dialectal Dutch, French and San have been suggested as possible origins f... |
Could a binary star system have a planet tidally locked to the baricenter? | No. It's an unstable equilibrium. Any perturbation, no matter how small, would cause the planet to accelerate away from the barycentre towards one or other star. Exactly what orbit it would then go into depends on the relative masses of the stars and the ellipticity of their orbits. | [
"Close binary stars throughout the universe are expected to be tidally locked with each other, and extrasolar planets that have been found to orbit their primaries extremely closely are also thought to be tidally locked to them. An unusual example, confirmed by MOST, may be Tau Boötis, a star that is probably tidal... |
Are there any practical uses for trying to get a Noble gas to react with other elements/compounds. | Noble gas compounds have fairly niche uses, in general. Many are very strong oxidising agents and could be quite useful because there's little chance of any side reactions happening - [xenic acid](_URL_0_) can oxidise other compounds without introducing any impurities into the reaction, since it liberates stable xenon which is very unlikely to spontaneously react with any other species in the system.
Noble gas compounds can also be easier to handle than the gases themselves, which can be handy when you're dealing with radioactive isotopes. | [
"The noble gases are generally non-reactive because they have fully filled electronic shells, which are extremely stable. Until the 1960s, no chemical bond with a noble gas was known. In 1962, Neil Bartlett used fluorine-containing platinum hexafluoride to react with xenon. He called the compound he prepared xenon ... |
What goes on inside the newborn after the umbilical cord is cut? And what is going on inside in pre-belly button times? | The umbilical cord connect the foetus to the placenta, which in turn is attached to the uterine wall. At the placenta the foetal blood circuit runs in a series of villi (fingerlike projections) into a pool of maternal blood which has leaked into cavities in the placenta. The barrier between the two is extremely thin, sufficient to stop RBC's and other cells from crossing over, but allowing the transfer of nutrients from the mother into the foetal blood supply, and metabolic byproducts in the other direction.
By birth the organs of the foetus are all fully functional, and I believe that most of the metabolic wastes are being excreted by the newborn into the amniotic fluid, the exception being CO2. (I can't find a source for the functionality of the liver/kidneys of the foetus in my textbook, but I am confident it's correct.).
By the time the baby is born therefore, the placenta is only providing oxygen and nutrients and the newborn has a fully functioning liver and kidneys to deal with waste products/blood filtration. The lungs however are a slightly harder matter. They're filled with fluid, which holds them tightly shut and the first breath to force them open requires a lot of effort on the part of the newborn. Interestingly, from the time of the first breath until the day you die, your lungs are never again completely empty of air, there's always a residual volume which you can't force out no matter how hard you try.
Sources: L. Sherwood, "Human Physiology: From Cells to Systems" 8th Edn. / Second year physiology student. | [
"In placental mammals, the umbilical cord (also called the navel string, birth cord or funiculus umbilicalis) is a conduit between the developing embryo or fetus and the placenta. During prenatal development, the umbilical cord is physiologically and genetically part of the fetus and (in humans) normally contains t... |
Who actually wrote/compiled the Qur'an? | You might find [this discussion ](_URL_0_) useful to answer the question about where and how the text originated.
There aren’t good theories as to who wrote the Quran if Muhammad wasn’t the author (or transmitter, in the Islamic worldview) — some people have their favorite candidates, but none are proven.
Since you’re coming from a Biblical Studies background, you might check out the work of Gabriel Said Reynolds — he’s a prof at Notre Dame, and he’s done a lot of interesting comparative work on the Bible and Qur’an (it’s academic, not polemical - he’s more interested in the message and meaning of the religious texts). | [
"The text of the Qur'an is generally considered by university scholars to record the words spoken by Muhammad as the search for variants in Western academia has not yielded any differences of great significance. The Qur'an, however, mainly records the ideological and spiritual considerations of Muhammad, and only f... |
How were the most recently discovered Elements (ie. 113, 117, 119 ect.) documented, when their half lives are so short? | Depending on the lifetime of the nuclide and your experimental setup, you may or may not have time to directly detect it before it decays. If not, you can just detect its decay products and infer what the original nucleus was.
The shortest nuclear lifetimes are in the order of 10^(-22) seconds, and those ones can’t be detected directly, but we still study them and learn a lot of interesting things about them. | [
"In 1959, the Swedish team attempted to explain the Berkeley team's inability to detect element 102 in 1958, maintaining that they did discover it. However, later work has shown that no nobelium isotopes lighter than No (no heavier isotopes could have been produced in the Swedish experiments) with a half-life over ... |
why do our eyes strain when we look up instead of down when we're awake, even though they automatically rest looking upwards when we're asleep? | It's not the eyes straining when looking up, but your upper eyelid trying to stay above your pupil. | [
"Primary reasons is eye fatigue as a result of excessive pressure on the eyes because of reading, watching TV, computer, poor lighting, etc. Some other reasons are poor posture, poor diet, lack of sleep, etc.\n",
"The eyes are never completely at rest. They make fast random jittering movements even when we are fi... |
what do gulf countries have against al jazeera in particular? | Authoritarian states are usually distrustful of any media they don't control. The Qatari government has allowed AJ to report on corruption and human rights abuses that the other Gulf countries would have preferred not to be covered. | [
"Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region, Hamas and radical Islamists in Libya has led to increasing tensions with other Arab states of the Persian Gulf. These tensions came to a head during a March 2014 meeting of the GCC, after which the UAE, Saudi Arabia and B... |
Why are elementary-aged students in the US knowingly taught a version of US History that middle and high schools have to completely contradict and reexplain? | I am not a historian per se, but I am a teacher, so hopefully I can answer this question in a way that the mods will allow to remain. If not, forgive me.
Teachers in all states of the United States are required by law to teach certain standards (standards may vary). I'm based in the state of Texas and we are required to teach the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills in our classrooms. You can find a comprehensive list of those skills here: _URL_0_
To be more specific, you requested information regarding why students in elementary schools are taught that Columbus discovered the earth was round, Ben Franklin and electricity, etc. In short, they aren't. Here is the link to the TEKS for Grade Level 6: _URL_1_
Columbus isn't a topic for 6th graders in Texas, but if you scroll down to section 4, topic B, you'll see that the only mention of Benjamin Franklin refers to his role in the American Revolution.
While I will admit that these requirements are simply a framework, there is also a system for teachers called the TEKS Resource System, which serves to clarify the TEKS for all Texas teachers. Some teachers will supplement lessons with the textbook, while others will use their own research conducted through college to decide which specific details they will teach.
It is worth nothing that these skills are updated and corrected over time, although I would have to assume that there was never a TEK that said, "Teach that Columbus discovered the world was round," since that fact has been well-known for decades prior to your own experience. | [
"Nevertheless, the older systems do persist in many jurisdictions. While they are in the minority today, there are still school districts which, instead of adopting the \"middle school\", still distinguish between junior and senior high schools. Thus, high schools can be either 9–12, which is most common, or 10–12.... |
almonds trees and alike 'use' a lot of water, where does all that water go? | It goes away quite quickly: they run it up to their leaves, and it evaporates from there. This in turn pulls more water up, and so it continues. | [
"Denver Water's primary water sources are the South Platte River, Blue River, Williams Fork and Fraser River watersheds, but it also uses water from the South Boulder Creek, Ralston Creek and Bear Creek watersheds.\n",
"Water lilies are aquatic rhizomatous perennial herbs, sometimes with stolons, as well. The lea... |
how do people tame predators such as tiger or lions? | Raising them from birth helps. If you feed something and give it enough food and space and entertainment, it won't be as inclined to kill you. Although they're tame, not domesticated, so they could snap at any moment. | [
"With smaller prey, such as monkeys and hares, the tiger bites the nape, often breaking the spinal cord, piercing the windpipe, or severing the jugular vein or common carotid artery. Though rarely observed, some tigers have been recorded to kill prey by swiping with their paws, which are powerful enough to smash th... |
if you’re short sighted, are you able to see something clearly in a mirror that is close to you showing a reflection of something that is further away? or is it still not readable even in the mirror? | Looking into a mirror or directly at this far away object, the light from the object has to travel such a distance any way you look at it, so the object would still not be readable even in the mirror. | [
"Looking through a mirror from different positions (but necessarily with the point of observation restricted to the halfspace on one side of the mirror) is like looking at the 3D mirror image of space; without further mirrors only the mirror image of the halfspace before the mirror is relevant; if there is another ... |
How much does the toothpaste you use really affect your dental hygiene? | Fluoride ions in toothpaste and drinking water intercalate into the enamel that covers the outside of the tooth increasing resistance to decay and acidic erosion. Also, triclosan, a bactericidal agent, is added to some brands to inhibit plaque formation and gingivitis. It also combats bad breath due to bacterial growth. These claims must be supported by extensive clinical evidence. | [
"However oral hygiene is effective at preventing gum disease (gingivitis / periodontal disease). Food is forced inside pits and fissures under chewing pressure, leading to carbohydrate-fuelled acid demineralisation where the brush, fluoride toothpaste, and saliva have no access to remove trapped food, neutralise ac... |
A question about the human body |
I would say that an organ (such as the heart) fails to meet at least key one criterion of the [definition of a living creature](_URL_0_) - it can't reproduce.
Even the most basic of parasites can make more parasites. A heart can't make more hearts. It might be alive by some definitions, but it's not a living creature.
| [
"Most aspects of human physiology are closely homologous to corresponding aspects of animal physiology. The human body consists of the legs, the torso, the arms, the neck, and the head. An adult human body consists of about 100 trillion (10) cells. The most commonly defined body systems in humans are the nervous, t... |
Why didn’t other American colonists mix cultures and have children to the extent the Spanish did? |
This question comes up from time to time and has [a section in the faq](_URL_0_).
The most interesting answers from there might be: [This one raising a few general points]( _URL_3_ ); this one going into [Spanish American organisation](_URL_2_). For a more specific example, [I've written here]( _URL_1_ ) about "mixing" in Mexico and about the casta System in Spanish America.
I'll highlight a few important points below and can answer follow ups on Spanish America, but not so much on the French or British.
* Differences in the **time-frame** play an important role here, as the ealier colonial powers were organized quite differently than the later colonial empires e.g. of the 19th century. The settler colonies - e.g. of the British in N.America and many other regions - focused on extracting resources and had a stricter seperation between European settlers and native populations. Whereas e.g. the earlier Spanish and Portuguese empires had from very early on intermarriages between native, European and African populations. What is more, even already in the 16/17th centuries the French and British studies what they perceived as "failures" of the Spanish to control their overseas possessions, and modified their own legitimations accodringly.
So *when* a certain European power started colonizing is one main factor here. This also shows for example with the French empire, where in the early modern period "métissage" or mixed marriages where quite common compared to , say British North America. But where e.g. in a later colony like Algeria in the 19th century divisions between population groups were more rigidly enforced.
* With **social organization** more specifically, we can also a more fluid approach at least in *colonial* Spanish America compared to the later stricter approaches in British America (e.g. with the One Drop Rule). I'm recycling my post I mentioned above for some insight into the socalled casta system:
> Casta groups included the Spanish at the top of the pyramid, who held the highest posts including that of Viceroy; and "indios" ..., who were under the Crown's protection if they converted, and if noble could continue to hold a certain influence. Others were the "creoles" or Europeans born overseas; "mestizos" of mixed European-native origin; people of African origin; and Asians (often from the Philippines). Then we have a large variety of casta due to mixing between the groups (hopefully answering your last question). The important thing to understand here is that this was an *ideal * system which did not actually work completely as envisaged by the Spanish. ...
> So we have at least in earlier colonial times (ca pre 17th c.) still quite of lot of flexibility between these groups. We know of noble Indians and mestizos who described themselves and were perceived as "Spanish". On the other hand, noble Spaniards starting with conquistadors tried to marry into the native nobility in order to gain legitimacy and privileges. R.D. Cope has spoken of "the limits of racial domination" in this context, meaning that even commoners of lower castas had a certain agency and could swith between groups. Nonetheless, he argues that there were long-term effects to the casta system and its exertion of elite Spanish control; and that it would influence people's perceptions of these groups.
While I can't go into more detail for the British/French on this, it seems to me that (esp. in modern times) there would have been less opportunities for a) intermixing between the various groups, and b) changing between the groups there. Moreover, a larger part of the pre-hispanic native population was concentrated in Central and South America in comparison to North America. This was influenced but not "reversed" by the demographic catastrophes that struck native people in Mexico and other places post-conquest.
* Last but not least, I'd add that the different **legitimations** used by the Spanish and the French/British/etc. played another role. For the Spanish, the native people's conversion was central to their rights to colonise. This influenced their more long-term approach of conversion and cohabitation, as the native people *when Christian* where supposed to be under the Spanish Crown's protection. In contrast other powers like the British legitimised their colonisation more strongly with their rights to supposedly "uninhabited" lands. This made it in practice somewhat easier to argue that a certain area was uninhabited and start conquering other areas from there, displacing the original inhabitants rather than attempting to convert them (although there were many exceptions to these broad patterns).
| [
"In the early colonial years, children born of one Indigenous and one non-Native parent usually had a white father and an Indigenous mother. This was largely due to the majority of the early colonists being male. As many Native American tribes had matrilineal kinship systems, they considered the children to be born... |
What was the climate in the Mediterranean in antiquity? | The data you seek should be available through paleoclimatic reconstruction combining data from dendrochronology, palynology and stratigraphy. You should turn towards geological sources and find what you need. A very quick search turned up the following paper: A Review of 2000 Years of Paleoclimatic Evidence in the Mediterranean,
Jürg Luterbacher et al. (2012) available online at : _URL_1_
In particular, the following quote should get you started:
"High-resolution paleolimnological data from northern Spain show good intersite coherence and indicate lower water levels and higher salinities synchronous with the MCA (Medieval Climate Anomaly) and generally more humid conditions during the Little Ice Age (LIA) (Roberts et al., 2012). This pattern is in agreement with other lake, marine, and treering records from Iberia and Morocco."
But the situation they depict is different in the eastern med.
So there is data, but it will not likely be from de-visu historic accounts but rather through climatic proxies such as pollen records, tree-rings and stable isotope ratios.
Other potentially intersting sources which I have'nt had time to parse are: _URL_0_
and
_URL_2_
| [
"The Mediterranean climate is most readily associated with the areas around the Mediterranean basin, where viticulture and winemaking first flourished on a large scale due to the influence of the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans of the ancient world.\n",
"BULLET::::- The Mediterranean, developing from scattered Ph... |
is a "meal-in-a-pill" theoretically possible? if so, what are the current limitations in developing it? | So we've got ones that have all the vitamins and minerals already, that part is down.
The issue would be shoving all the calories in there, in a way your body could digest them. That part is a lot harder. There is going to be a lot more mass to the pill suddenly trying to fit 2000 calories into it (though odds are you'd get like 4-5 pills with 400-500 calories each throughout the day). That isn't even thinking about fitting different macros into the pill. You can't survive on carbs alone, you need things like amino acids ect.
But the single biggest barrier to this ever happening is demand. People fucking LOVE food. We love it to the point we often eat ourselves to death when there is lots of it around. We developed holidays and celebrations around food. We developed entire industries around food.
We love to eat. No one will want to make something that removes eating. We are more likely to see an anti-calorie pill to let us eat more than a calorie pill that makes us eat less. we kind of already have anti-calorie pills but they'll give you the shits something wicked. | [
"Mortars and pestles are also used as drug paraphernalia to grind up pills to speed up absorption when they are ingested, or in preparation for insufflation. To finely ground drugs, not available in liquid dosage form is used also, if patients need artificial nutrition such as parenteral nutrition or by nasogastric... |
X-post from DAE - what causes the "fizzy" sound in your neck? | I don't have a great answer for this, but I can tell you it is fairly common, could be due to several different things, and most all are likely benign. If you have concerns please talk to your doctor. | [
"A souffle () is a vascular or cardiac murmur with a blowing quality when heard on auscultation. It is particularly used to describe vascular murmurs or transmitter heart sounds which occur during pregnancy, either from the uterus and breasts of the mother, or from the fetus.\n",
"Hamman's sign (rarely, Hammond's... |
Why are planets not tidally locked with the sun? | Given enough time, all the planets will become tidally locked with the Sun. The timescale involved though are in the billions - trillions of years (for the outer planets). How fast a planet becomes tidally locked depends on the mass of the star and the distance from the planet to the star.
We have found exoplanets [tidally locked](_URL_1_) to their stars because they are so close to their host stars (some up to 1/5 the distance Mercury to the Sun).
PS: Have included more material to help you understand tidal locking.
[/u/Das_Mime 's great visualization of tidal locking](_URL_0_)
Note that the Sun can raise tides on planets, as Earth does on the Moon and vice versa.
The separation between the Earth and the Sun is on average ~149 million kilometres; the distance separating Earth and the Moon is ~380 000 km; the distance separating Pluto and Charon is ~19 640km (doubly locked, i.e locked to each other).
| [
"It is suggested that all seven planets are likely to be tidally locked into a so-called synchronous spin state (one side of each planet permanently facing the star), making the development of life there much more challenging. A less likely possibility is that some may be trapped in a higher-order spin–orbit resona... |
How were Gobekli Tepe and Ollantaytambo constructed at the time they were, apparently without any advanced tools? | Basically, slow methods that use up tools. We're used to fast methods that don't destroy our tools, so it's hard to imagine working in such a way. Hitting rocks against each other, rocks rubbing on other rocks with hard grit between, soft materials loaded with hard grit to act like sandpaper, eventually copper saws rubbing hard grit back and forth through a cut. The size and accuracy of the work is just a matter of persistence and care. When your methods are slow, there is plenty of time to check and re-check the fit of what you're putting together. | [
"Göbekli Tepe is regarded by some as an archaeological discovery of great importance since it could profoundly change the understanding of a crucial stage in the development of human society. Ian Hodder of Stanford University said, \"Göbekli Tepe changes everything\". If indeed the site was built by hunter-gatherer... |
what is the point of having a separate police force? why not just have the army do the policing? | The army is trained to kill enemies. The police is trained to keep the peace. It's not the same training at all, having the army do the policing is a recipe for an authoritative government. | [
"In the UK, service police are the formations of the British Armed Forces responsible for policing armed forces personnel. They are comparable to the provosts of other countries, however the term 'provost' in the UK has various uses including reference to the staff of military prisons and senior service police offi... |
how does the information travel through cords to make sound on speakers? | As electrical voltages and currents. If you put a 1 kHz AC current (current that swap directions 1000 times a second) on the wire, it causes the speaker to move at 1 kHz, which causes the air to move at 1 kHz, which makes you hear a 1 kHz tone. To play more complex sounds, you just put a more complex electrical current on the wire that matches the shape of the sound. | [
"In operation, a signal is delivered to the voice coil by means of electrical wires, from the amplifier through speaker cable, then through flexible tinsel wire to the moving coil. The current creates a magnetic field that causes the diaphragm to be alternately forced one way or the other, by the magnetic field pro... |
Were there ever any cases of "Wizards" being put to death during the period of hysteria about witchcraft? How were they treated as opposed to the women in their "trials"? | In the European middle ages about 50% of trials for sorcery with intent to harm (*malefica*) were against men. By the early modern period (after ~1500 CE) males accounted for 20% or thereabouts, reflecting the shift from politics to accusations among neighbours and the concomitant increase.
The treatment was identical in all respects.
'Wizard' is not a term we find among European records.
For the medieval period read Richard Kieckhefer, *European Witch Trials: Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture, 1300-1500* (University of California Press, 1976)
For the early modern period read Robin Briggs, *Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft* (Blackwell, 2002) | [
"During the seventeenth century there were cases of witchcraft: in 1630 an unknown number of women confessed to the crime and were confined in the dungeon at Rothesay Castle, left without food or water and died from starvation. Other instances are recorded but the most fervent activity occurred during the Great Sco... |
why does built-in navigation cost so much more? | Because they can. It's not exactly rare that the official accessories and addons costs more than 3rd party alternatives that often are better as well. The reason for why it works out for them is that lots of people simply don't bother to look for alternatives. | [
"Sailing cost shows how easy a ship is to maneuver. Some action cards didn't use a fixed cost, but relied instead upon a ship's sailing cost (sometimes modified up or down). The advantage of a small ship was the fact that it could fill fast and press the offensive quickly.\n",
"The supply of cargo ships is genera... |
what is the white stuff (i assume it's ice) that i always see falling off of space shuttles at take off and what does it do? | It's ice. It forms on the fuel tanks becauce the fuel is very cold. What does it do? It falls off.
Edit: Our benevolent overlords have required more details about the fuel and tank. Very well, but no peeking in this section if you are under five. The fuel consists of liquid hydrogen, along with a liquid oxygen oxidiser, both of which have very low boiling points at pressures typically encountered on earth. In order to be liquid at the pressures inside the fuel tank, the fuel and oxidiser are kept at an extremely low temperature. This, combined with relatively thin fuel tank walls (gotta save weight on rockets), means the outer surface of the fuel tank will be very cold, bringing the temperature of the water vapor in the air around it low enough that ice forms on the tank and then falls off as the whole contraption shakes mightily as it takes off. There's no purpose to the ice, it's just a byproduct of the fuel used. | [
"The shuttle's main fuel tank was covered in thermal insulation foam intended to prevent ice from forming when the tank is full of liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Such ice could damage the shuttle if shed during lift-off.\n",
"On 9 May 2013, at around 10:30 a.m. CDT, the ISS crew reported seeing small white flakes fl... |
If you were to travel passed a sound source and fly through its sound waves at supersonic speeds, would you hear the sound backwards? | Sort of, but not really. This is one case where the math is a little misleading unless complemented by physical intuition. Mathematically, you can just use the general expression for the Doppler shift which is:
f=(c+vr)/(c+vs)\*f0, where f is the observed frequency, fo is the original frequency, c is the speed of sound in the medium, vr is the speed of the receiver, and vs is the speed of the source. If source is stationary, the solution reduces to f=(c+vr)/(c)\*fo. As you can see when you are moving away from the source (when v is negative), once you pass the speed of sound in that medium the frequency goes through zero and then becomes negative, indicating that you would indeed hear the sound backwards. The problem is that if you are moving at supersonic speeds, you create a [shock wave](_URL_0_), in [front of you](_URL_1_), which will distort any sound coming your way. So while the simple math works out, in practice you wouldn't actually hear the signal backwards, but rather you would hear a mess.
On the other hand, you get a much cleaner situation when you reverse the situation, namely when you have a stationary observer and a moving source. In that case the equation for the doppler shift is f=(c)/(c+vs)\*f0. In that case if the source is moving towards you (where vs is negative) at supersonic speeds, then the frequency becomes negative. You might get a more physical understanding of this phenomenon [from this animation](_URL_2_). As you can see the the wavelets emitted at later times would reach you first because the the source is moving faster than the waves can propagate in that medium. What is somewhat cool is that if the source was moving at exactly 2c, then the observed frequency of the sound would be -fo. In other words, you would hear sound at the same frequency as it was emitted, but in reverse! | [
"A common analogy is the sonic boom of a supersonic aircraft. The sound waves generated by the supersonic body propagate at the speed of sound itself; as such, the waves travel slower than the speeding object and cannot propagate forward from the body, instead forming a shock front. In a similar way, a charged part... |
Was the Uncle of a King a Prince? | The use of prince you are referring to is the direct sons of a ruling monarch. If said uncle was the son of a king, then theoretically they would still be a prince.
That said, these men often received other titles and often those took precedence. If you were a prince who was made a Duke, you'd likely style yourself Duke before prince. | [
"Although he was only a grandson of a British Sovereign, by the time of his birth it had become obvious that his uncle would not have any children, so he received a coat of arms as if he were a son of the Sovereign. Said arms consisted of those of the kingdom, differenced by a \"label argent of three points, on eac... |
if looking up personal information on public wifi is considered dangerous, why does no one seem to warn about doing the same on cell phone networks shared by way more people? | In a cell phone network, data is encrypted between you and the tower, this makes it fairly secure unless someone pretends to be the tower
On public WiFi, if it's open then your data is flying around in it's natural exposed form that anyone can read. If it's a secured network, then your data is encrypted on its way to the access point, but everyone else on the network has the key so they can all see all of your data. This is combined with the possibility that the public WiFi hardware may have been breached and be copying data because your coffee shop isn't going to be a technical expert.
WPA3 will make public WiFi a lot more secure by encrypting everyone's traffic with a different key so people can't read your packets flying through the air | [
"Online surveillance, such as recording and retaining details of web and e-mail traffic, may have effects on lawful activities. People may be deterred from accessing or communicating legal information because they know of possible surveillance and believe that such communication may be seen as suspicious. According... |
Did the therm 'gothic architecture' come from italian clergymen lookng to ridicule northern european ecclesiastic architecture by comparing it to the barbarian tribe, who sacked Rome? | From [my answer to a similar question a while ago](_URL_0_):
'Gothic' is a term we receive from the Italian renaissance and then further embellished as a pejorative in the subsequent two centuries. Gothic stems from the 'goths', or barbarians, which various renaissance and baroque historians used to refer to the 'dark ages': these historians were enamoured of classicism and Roman effects and as such viewed the entire middle ages as a dark age, as a negative moment, of creativity and learning; as an overtaking of progressive, higher culture by barbarians.
While to us now the term has lost its negative elements, when it was first used in the 16-18th century it was entirely a criticism of the deepest sort and which still lives with us in terms like 'dark ages'. | [
"Gothic architecture was known during the period as (\"French/Frankish work\"). The term \"Gothic architecture\" originated in the 16th century and was originally very negative, suggesting something barbaric. Giorgio Vasari used the term \"barbarous German style\" in his 1550 \"Lives of the Artists\" to describe wh... |
in the classical period, being homosexual seemed quite socially acceptable (just based on what i've seen from greeks and romans); why then did the bible have parts in it that discouraged homosexual relationships? | The original text of the bible wasn't written by Greeks or Romans.
Eventually people tangentially related to the late Roman empire collected and translated various texts to compose the modern bible, but they didn't write it.
The various books of the bible were written by culturally distinct Middle Eastern peoples over a *very* long period of time, and those cultures weren't so forgiving. | [
"The conceptions of homosexuality found in classical Islamic texts resemble the traditions of classical Greece and those of ancient Rome, rather than modern Western notions of sexual orientation. It was expected that many or most mature men would be sexually attracted to both women and adolescent boys (with differe... |
why does the world appear faster at night? | Next time you're in a fast moving vehicle (and not driving) look as far off into the distance as you can, then look right beside the vehicle. Things really far away barely seem to be moving while things really close to you appear to be zipping by. At night, the distance you can see is greatly reduced so all you can see are the things closest, which appear to be moving the fastest, making it feel as though you're going faster than during the day. | [
"As I sat there in Southwold overlooking the German Ocean, I sensed a quite clearly the earth's slow turning into the dark. The huntsmen are up in America, wrote Thomas Browne in the \"Garden of Cyrus\" and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. The shadow of the night is drawn like a black veil across ... |
What was the speed of glacial retreat prior to the 1900's? | There aren't a *lot* of measurements of glacier positions before the 1900s, but there are some. [This paper](_URL_0_) gives a great summary of all the available data. Figures 8 and 9 are particularly useful.
Between 1760 and 1800, 42 glaciers were measured: their lengths typically changed by +5 to -10 m/year, with a median very close to zero.
Between 1960 and 2000, 440 glaciers were measured: their lengths typically changed by -5 to -25 m/year, with a median of around -8 m/yr.
Comparing these averages is a bit tricky because it's not the same glaciers in each time window, but repeat measurements of the same glacier show similar results.
And BTW, you don't need modern tracking methods for this data: you just pound a stake into the ground near the front of the glacier, and measure the distance from it to the front of the ice. | [
"The glacier advanced rapidly during the Little Ice Age, reaching a maximum in the early eighteenth century. Having retreated several kilometres between the 1940s and 1980s, the glacier entered an advancing phase in 1984 and at times has advanced at the phenomenal (by glacial standards) rate of 70 cm a day. The flo... |
Why in the history of Japan and Vietnam, many emperors chose to abdicate but retain their political power? | > What are the reasons causing such disparities? I guess for some cases, such abdications might be beneficial to the smooth transition of powers to their desired successors
Right on the money!
In Japan the system of emperors "abdicating," but still exercising power is referred to as *Insei* ("monastery administration") or the cloistered rule system. It really comes about because of the rather...complex court politics in the Heian-kyō (now Kyōto).
During the Heian Period, the Fujiwara clan exercised an enormous amount of social and political influence on the imperial court. From the 800s onwards, the Fujiwara had married into the imperial family and gotten themselves appointed to key administrative positions. Several Fujiwara family members eventually become regents. When the newly-throned emperors, was a child, a Fujiwara member acted as the *Sesshō* regent. Even when emperors reached adulthood, they still had the Fujiwara breathing down their necks - a Fujiwara clan member acted as the *Kanpaku,* a kind of advisor-cum-regent who really called the shots. Because of decades of intermarriage, virtually every early Heian emperor had a mothers or close relatives from the Fujiwara family. Several emperors tried, but largely failed, to limit Fujiwara influence - the Fujiwara were richer, better-connected, and more politically-experienced. The mother of virtually every emperor was a Fujiwara woman.
The Emperor Daigo enjoyed brief success during the 900s when he managed to sideline the Fujiwara and rule in his own right, without a regent. However, he failed to set up at robust succession arrangement. After he died, the Fujiwara regency system returned in even greater force. If an emperor crossed them, they would outmanuever and dethrone them.
In the late 1060s and early 1070s, the Emperor Go-Sanjō finally managed to buck the system. His mother wasn't from the Fujiwara family, which have him a degree of independence and distance precious emperors had lacked. Exploiting divisions within the Fujiwara family, he managed to issue several decrees that reduced the power of the regency. Determined to keep power, he did a rather unusual thing...he abdicated in favor of the new emperor, Shirakawa.
In 1086, Shirakawa also abdicated in favor of his four year old son, starting the *Insei* system of rule from retirement. Many emperors went off to monasteries and became a *Daijō Hōō* ("cloistered emperor"). Others lived in their own palaces in Heian-kyō. By abdicating, the retired emperors could get out of the Fujiwara-controlled court and set up their own system of administration with the *In no chō* ("Office of the Cloistered Emperor"). Although the Fujiwara still held high office (ex. Minister of the Center), the key political and administrative decisions were now in the hands of the retired emperors. The cloistered emperors even had their own army, the *Hokumen no Bushi.* It also gave the retired emperor the chance to effectively act as regents for their own sons, allowing them time to grow up and get established without becoming Fujiwara puppets or be forced out by rivals. Indeed, at multiple points the father and grandfather of the throned emperor were alive and "retired."
Shirakawa himself managed to outlast two of his successors to the throne, ruling from behind the scenes for 41 years until his death in 1129.
The *insei* system could lead to some tensions - the Hōgen Rebellion, for example, was the result of a succession crisis and the resulting conflict between the emperor and the retired emperor.
| [
"The emperors of the last dynasty of Vietnam continued to hold this title until the French conquered Vietnam. The emperor, however, was then a puppet figure only and could easily be disposed of by the French for more pro-France figure. Japan took Vietnam from France and the Axis-occupied Vietnam was declared an emp... |
studded tires vs winter tires. | Honestly if studded tires are allowed where you live get studded tires | [
"Many jurisdictions in Asia, Europe, and North America seasonally allow snow tires with metal or ceramic studs to improve grip on packed snow or ice. Such tires are prohibited in other jurisdictions or during warmer months because of the damage they may cause to road surfaces. The metal studs are fabricated by enca... |
why is the severity of bad weather so different from when a cold front moves into a warm area, versus a warm front moving into a cold area? | Warm fronts tend to slide above the cold air they are pushing out. This means they have a long, horizontal, almost flat border. Since that border is what produces the clouds, the clouds are high up in the air, thin, flat and cover a vast area. So the rain is light because the clouds are thing, but last a while because of the large flat area they tend to cover.
Cold fronts are heavier, so they form a tall, almost vertical border. This means the clouds they forms, are very, very tall, but not very wide. This produces a huge amount of rain and other unpleasant weather, but it doesn't last as long. The following picture may help.
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_) | [
"The cooler and denser air wedges under the less-dense warmer air, lifting it. This upward motion causes lowered pressure along the cold front and can cause the formation of a narrow line of showers and thunderstorms when enough moisture is present. On weather maps, the surface position of the cold front is marked ... |
why when guys pee it some times splits into a double stream? | sexytime fluids caught in the urethra. | [
"Video Mode: After shooting the right scoop 8 times, shoot either the left or right scoop to begin Video Mode. In this mode, a peeping Tom appears, and the player must engage the left or right flippers to punch the peeping Tom a certain number of times.\n",
"Threesomes in Roman art typically show two men penetrat... |
When did people start seeing the Spanish Inquisition as a bad thing? How was it viewed while it was occuring? How about within & outside of Spain? | The Inquisition played an interesting role in the Spanish colony of Nueva Grenada. Slaves found that if they brought themselves before the Inquisition and claimed that they had been beaten until they blasphemed, they might be sold to a kinder master because the Inquisition saw blasphemy as a danger to the slave's soul. If the slave was sold to another owner, the soul of the slave could be more easily saved since they might be beaten less or less viciously. Consequently, slave owners began to resent the Inquisition.
However, the Inquisition was seen as a good thing by slave owners as well. One crime that the Inquisition persecuted in particular was witchcraft. Masters were constantly worried that their slaves were casting spells and cooperating with the devil. Even worse, these practices might create the means to create a slave revolt. The Inquisition was useful to slave owners because it provided a means for them to legally punish their slaves and hopefully suppress a rebellion.
Block, Kristen. Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit. Athens : University of Georgia Press, 2012.
Guengerich, Sara Vicuña. “The Witchcraft Trials of Paula Eguiluz, a Black Woman in Cartagena de Indias 1620-1636.” In Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550-1812, edited by Kathryn Joy McKnight and Leo J. Garofalo, 175-193. Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company Inc., 2009.
Landers, Jane. “The African Landscape of 17th Century Cartagena and its Hinterlands.” In The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade, edited by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Matt D. Childs and James Sidbury, 147-162. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
Olsen, Margaret M. Slavery and Salvation in Colonial Cartagena de Indias. Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2004.
| [
"The Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478 to keep Catholic orthodoxy. The first \"auto-da-fé\" took place in Seville in 1481, when six \"conversos\" (Jews forcibly converted to Christianity) were burnt at the stake. In Goya's lifetime he would have been quite aware of the history and strong influence that th... |
why or how videos on youtube differ so much in quality of image? | Some people have potato quality cameras, and some people have multi-thousand dollar 8K cameras and everywhere in-between. There is also lossy video compression (used to get a smaller video file size at a given resolution but lowers quality). | [
"Video quality is a characteristic of a video passed through a video transmission/processing system, a formal or informal measure of perceived video degradation (typically, compared to the original video). Video processing systems may introduce some amount of distortion or artifacts in the video signal, which negat... |
What kind of headgear did ancient Incan Warriors really wear? | I'm assuming you're talking about things like these? [1](_URL_6_), [2](_URL_2_), [3](_URL_7_) In actuality, they're not that far off from [Spanish](_URL_3_) drawings of [headgear.](_URL_0_) (Also see pages 104,106,110,112...) These are each Inca kings (Sapa Inca), so the specific headgear is likely more fancy than the average footsoldier would use, though the construction is similar. Other [images](_URL_5_) do show other military officials (here with spear on the left and shell trumpet on the right) wearing the same as the captured rival Inca. Unfortunately, the artistic tradition of the Inca homeland in the south-central Andes did not often feature human figures, so we can't exactly look to that for more evidence. However, the earlier Moche on the northern coast painted detailed scenes of human life on their vessels. From images like this [(pg. 167, warrior #15)](_URL_1_) we can see that it is not an unprecedented form.
The first drwaings all come from a fellow named Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. He was born in 1535 into an elite native family, which had maintained its prestige through smart political play as they transitioned from submission under the Inca to the Spanish. Poma'd greatest work, from which these illustrations come, was the *Nueva Cronica and Buen Gobierno*, both a chronicle of history from Adam and Eve on, and an indictment of Spanish cruelties to the local peoples. The work is very helpful in reconstructing the succession of Inca rulers and provides of a number of great illustrations of life at the time. While some might seem a little [cartoony](_URL_4_), some are very helpful for questions like this. | [
"Men either went naked or wore cloths covering their lower regions; women wore fine skirts woven from cotton, and some used a fine white cloth to cover their head and chest. The Manche Chʼol, based on their distinctive attire, in particular their turban-style headdresses, were probably descended from the Classic pe... |
why does placing a plastic bag over a credit card help a device read its magnetic stripe better? | The black rectangle on your card holds a number. Actually it's a set of numbers separated by delimiters, but that's not important. Just pretend it's one number.
If your card gets damaged, gaps appear in the electrical reading of the black strip, which means that inconsistencies appear in the number. That's no good; that's cause for error detection to throw the whole thing out.
Putting a plastic bag around the card spreads out the electrical influence of each individual atom in the card. This neutralizes (to some degree) degradation the card, because while the interaction with the reader is reduced as a whole, the relative reduction between the bad parts and the good parts are reduced. Consequently, the machine can read it.
To simulate what's happening, open up Microsoft Paint (assuming you're on Windows). Write, in huge size font. a number. Doesn't matter what.
Now scribble all over one or two of the characters. I'll bet it it's hard to read the number! Now zoom out until you can just barely make out the numbers. I'll bet you can get the original number you wrote.
It's the same effect, but through electricity instead of your eyes. | [
"Motorized readers are built in, for example ATMs. The credit/debit-card is inserted into the card slot, where the first magnetic head is placed. If a magnetic stripe can be recognized, a shutter will be opened and the card will be transported to the second magnetic head by roles. The card is read, thereby the devi... |
Why is it easier to open lids when you put in under hot water? | The simplest answer I can give you is that the lid is probably made of metal. Metals expand when exposed to heat, and therefore it's easier to open the lid from the jar. (Lid is now bigger than it used to be) | [
"The cold water release method involves using slow running cold tap water, over the edge of the pressure cooker lid, being careful to avoid the steam vent or any other valves or outlets and never immersing the pressure cooker under water, otherwise steam can be ejected from under the lid, which could cause scalding... |
what are the known psychological effects of long periods in space? | From the article it makes it look like bad psychological effects, however, there's such a thing as the [Overview Effect](_URL_0_), in which astronauts change their perspectives about life after seeing the earth as a tiny little part of the immense universe. It ultimately makes them see our problems as meaningless compared to the vastness of the universe and makes them get a sense of humanity as a whole instead of the way we see our geopolitical divisions. | [
"The psychological effects of living in space have not been clearly analyzed but analogies on Earth do exist, such as Arctic research stations and submarines. The enormous stress on the crew, coupled with the body adapting to other environmental changes, can result in anxiety, insomnia and depression.\n",
"Humans... |
why does stomach pain from a virus or food poisoning come in waves? | Many intestinal issues come in “spasms”, wich is a way your guts tell you there is something wrong. It is a short term activity spike (spasm) that we can feel.
I believe this is because most of our digestive tract doesnt have that many nociceptors, thus you feel only the big spikes of abnormal activity.
A constant pain would be unbearable for our body and probably cause you to faint and/or curl in a little ball on the bathrooms corner!
| [
"Symptoms often include vomiting, fever, and aches, and may include diarrhea. Bouts of vomiting can be repeated with an extended delay in between, because even if infected food was eliminated from the stomach in the first bout, microbes, like bacteria, (if applicable) can pass through the stomach into the intestine... |
Concerning the Aurora on Saturn, what is generating the magnetic field of this planet is a Gas giant? (Video in comments) | The source of the gas giants' magnetic fields is thought to be generated in the same way as the Earth's. Except that instead of molten iron generating the field, metallic hydrogen is thought to be responsible. | [
"Unlike Jupiter's, the Saturn's main auroral ovals are not related to the breakdown of the co–rotation of the plasma in the outer parts of the planet's magnetosphere. The aurorae on Saturn are thought to be connected to the reconnection of the magnetic field under the influence of the Solar wind (Dungey cycle), whi... |
can you "break" the hippocratic oath? if that's possible, does doing so prevent you from working as a physician? | It is more a formal thing that you can elect to take when you graduate but are not required to. _URL_0_
You can break it all you want, so long as doing so does not violate the standards of where you are working. | [
"A Hippocratic Oath for scientists is an oath similar to the Hippocratic Oath for medical professionals, adapted for scientists. Multiple varieties of such an oath have been proposed. Joseph Rotblat has suggested that an oath would help make new scientists aware of their social and moral responsibilities; opponents... |
why did russia decide in the late 1500's to attempt to conquer siberia - an unimaginably large & frigid territory - which would increase the size of its kingdom by ~17x? | The time of Russian territorial expansion was a time of colonialism for all the great powers of Europe. Russia was not well situated to become a maritime power like most of Western Europe, but it did have essentially exclusive access to "unclaimed" territory to its east. While Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands were creating empires for themselves in the Americas and to a lesser extent in Africa and Asia, Russia spread east to Siberia. They were seeking what everyone was seeking, new lands to colonize and cultivate, new resources to tap, new people to spread the gospel of their religion to.
And it was "available", so to speak. There were not, at the time, any great empires or powerful states laying claim to the territory. Only relatively undeveloped societies, mainly herders and hunter-gatherers, who could be easily conquered and subjugated. Just as Spain and France had laid massive territorial claims in North and South America, so did Russia to the vast northern expanse of Asia. | [
"Russian expansion into Siberia began with the conquest of the Khanate of Sibir in 1582. By 1643 they reached the Pacific at Okhotsk. East of the Yenisei River there was little land fit for agriculture, except Dauria, the land between the Stanovoy Range and the Amur River which was nominally subject to the Qing dyn... |
what's the difference between an application and a server? | Think of an application as another word for a program, or a piece of software. Microsoft Word is an application and so is the game of candy crush on your phone.
A server is basically a computer that acts like a central repository of programs or files that many different people can connect to and access. A business might have a server filled with necessary data files, like sales records and customer information, that different employees can connect to and get that information from if they need.
Similarly, Netflix has servers filled with movies that its customers can connect to and watch those movies from. It doesn't matter what the files may be, if it's serving up files that users request, it can be called a server. | [
"Application servers are system software upon which web applications or desktop applications run. Application servers consist of web server connectors, computer programming languages, runtime libraries, database connectors, and the administration code needed to deploy, configure, manage, and connect these component... |
In the American South of the 1950s-1970s, was it typical for older men (in their 20s or older) to 'court' teenage girls? What were typical marriage ages and age gaps? | The most famous example in the 1950s-1970s of a man from the American South 'courting' a teenage girl is of course the white rock'n'roller Jerry Lee Lewis, who married his first cousin Myra Gale in 1957, when he was 22 and she was 13.
To give some more specific context than 'the American South', Jerry Lee Lewis had come from Ferriday in the rural Louisiana area of Concordia Parish, on the Western side of the Mississippi River, with the state of Mississippi on the Eastern side. Concordia Parish was, by all accounts, a violent place with a long history of duels and violence (it also had a poor life expectancy for the slaves who in 1860 outnumbered white people in the parish 10 to 1). Ferriday as a town appeared in 1906 as a result of a train line terminal being put there to serve the wider Concordia Parish, and Rick Bragg quotes an earlier author as calling Ferriday 'not only a bad town...the baddest town', due to the prevalence of violence, brothels, saloons and gambling dens in Ferriday. Lewis's parents were poor farmers but they belonged to a particularly incestuous clan of families which included Lewis's mother's sister's husband, the richest man in Concordia - so while Lewis's upbringing was quite poor, he as a white man had opportunities and connections that the majority black population of Ferriday did not). To give a sense of the incestuousness, Jerry Lee Lewis was 'double first cousins' with another member of the clan in Ferriday, the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart.
In the context of Jerry Lee Lewis's milieu in Concordia Parish, him marrying Myra at the age of 13 was seen as rather unremarkable. Myra was the daughter of J.W. Brown (who was the son of Jerry Lee's father's sister), who he met in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was making his music career. In order to marry Myra, he needed to leave Tennessee and perform a little legal chicanery; he went to Mississippi with a woman who claimed that she was named Myra Gale Brown and twenty years old (while the actual Myra was at school in the seventh grade) on a legal document. With this issue now dealt with, he was free to marry Brown, which he did in DeSoto County in Mississippi.
According to Rick Bragg's biography of Lewis,
> The legions who have condemned him for it, for romancing a thirteen-year-old girl, have painted a picture that had nothing to do with reality, he said. His own sister married at twelve. People celebrated it, because, as his mama said, the child knew her own mind. Marriage to a girl of thirteen or fourteen was routine in his family’s history, and had been for as long as anyone could remember. It might be offensive to some, to many, but it was what was.
J.W. Brown did claim that he wanted to kill Lewis for marrying his daughter, and travelled to Sun Records' recording studios with a pistol, though he was relatively easily dissuaded:
> “Talk is what talk is, just a bunch of yapping,” says Jerry Lee. “I done what I wanted to do,” and for J. W. or anyone else to pretend to be shocked by that, to be caught flat-footed by his courtship of Myra, by the fact that it led to a wedding, is a revision of the way things were in those days, he believes.
According to Bragg, Brown also intended to file criminal charges against Jerry Lee, but the prosecutor he talked to talked him out of it. The Phillips brothers at Sun Records knew about the situation, but they also clearly knew that Jerry Lee Lewis was a wild one and their post-Elvis money train. Said Sam Phillips:
> It was a devastating, unnecessary, stupid damn thing, but what could we do about it? I think Jerry’s innocence back then [in dealing with the press]. . . backfired. They scalped him. It turned out to be a very ghastly and deadly thing. So many people wanted to do in . . . rock and roll, and this is just what they were looking for. It should never have played a role of such significance in Jerry’s life.
Aware that Lewis marrying a 13-year-old was a terrible look, the Phillips brothers tried to dissuade Lewis from taking Myra with him to England on tour with him in early 1958. When Lewis did take Myra with him and the British press found out, it was the kind of tabloid front page news that unsurprisingly destroyed his career: *ROCK STAR'S WIFE IS 15 AND IT'S HIS THIRD MARRIAGE*. This was reported on in the US as well, and the American media effectively blacklisted him. According to *Hellfire*, "Dick Clark of the TV show *Bandstand* later recalled that 'in a very cowardly act I decided to hold off further bookings for Jerry Lee on the show, for which I've been sorry ever since'."
[Myra Gale Brown - these days a real estate broker called Myra Williams - has recently given her opinion on the matter in an interview with author Alan Light](_URL_0_):
> In my little mind, I couldn’t believe that they could not see that I was a grown woman. I was only 13, but people said I was more mature than Jerry. I was serious-minded, I was like, “We gotta take care of this and do this,” and he was like, “Where’s the piano?” That’s what he is, that’s what he’s about. And I really, truly wasn’t a typical teenager.
> ... When we went back home, the whole country was “Shame on you, bad boy.” The other thing we had back then was a hypocritical society. It was “Do as I say, not as I do—and if you get caught, we don’t even know you.” Also, a lot of people took good notes when it happened. Elvis didn’t marry a little 16-year-old girl, did he? Priscilla lived with his grandmother for, what, seven or eight years?
However, [in a *People* magazine article from 1989](_URL_1_), Myra was clearly less sanguine about the horrors of her marriage to Jerry Lee Lewis than she is in the Alan Light interview:
> After more than a decade of marriage, she says, Jerry Lee’s mean streak was a mile wide and growing. Daughter Phoebe witnessed at least one of her mother’s beatings, and it upset her. Myra said. “Phoebe was in the middle of the fire during the turbulent years. She was always jumping in the middle and trying to make it all go away. Phoebe had to grow up fast.”
> By 1969 Williams was constantly gulping tranquilizers to stave off nervous attacks that caused her face to erupt in patchlike shingles. One night, when Lewis called in from the road and began drunkenly berating her, Myra pulled a pearl-handled pistol from her nightstand and announced that she was going to blow her head off. She said Lewis just told her, “Put the phone close, so I can hear it go off.” At that moment she decided to leave him. “Something in me snapped,” Williams recalls. “I had reached a point. There was no more tolerating it and being miserable. It was either die or leave. If I was still married to Jerry, I’d probably be dead by now.
So we have a situation where getting married to a 13-year-old was of dubious legality in the South, but nonetheless, in rural areas without civilised society having a strong presence, it occurred. And blind eyes were turned to its occurrence, by relatives, by prosecutors, by record company people - Sam Phillips saying that 'it should never have played a role of such significance in Jerry’s life' is a particularly revealing quote, as is Dick Clark's; both imply that getting married to a 13-year-old was seen as atypical and improper but not necessarily the kind of thing that should be career ending. So there was a whole lotta shakin' of heads going on, but not a whole lot of caring that maybe a man who marries a 13-year-old might also end up physically and mentally abusing her to the point where she was contemplating suicide.
Sources:
* *Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story* by Rick Bragg
* *Hellfire* by Nick Tosches | [
"After 1860, as the larger cities opened department stores, middle-class women did most of the shopping; increasingly they were served by young middle-class women clerks. Typically, most young women quit their jobs when they married. In some ethnic groups, however, married women were encouraged to work, especially ... |
What medicine was used by American field medics in WW2? Was it superior or inferior to other countries? | You might be interested in [this previous answer I wrote](_URL_0_) which covers the importance of penicillin for the Allied war effort, especially compared to less effective sulphonamides the Germans used. | [
"During World War I, d'Hérelle and assistants (his wife and daughters among them) produced over 12 million doses of medication for the allied military. At this point in history, medical treatments were primitive, compared to today's standards. The smallpox vaccine, developed by Edward Jenner, was one of the few vac... |
why can only 2/3rd’s of a plastic be recycled? | Certain types of plastics, urethanes in particular, are chemically cured thermoset plastics which cannot simply be melted down to be re-formed into new shapes.
They do not melt but instead slowly degrade on heating to a variety of toxic compounds. They could potentially be burned as fuel with the proper exhaust handling but the process cost for these types makes them uneconomical to recycle at the moment.
We are working on bacteria that can break down such plastics, so recycling or at least properly disposing of them may not be such a problem in the near future. | [
"As a subset of plastic, FR plastics are liable to a number of the issues and concerns in plastic waste disposal and recycling. Plastics pose a particular challenge in recycling because they are derived from polymers and monomers that often cannot be separated and returned to their virgin states. For this reason no... |
Can a single photon spontaneously split into two photons as long as momentum is conserved? | While the photon is the exchange boson of electric charge, it itself is not electrically charged (QED is an abelian gauge theory), so a photon can't directly radiate another photon.
However photons can do electron-positron pair creation, which can then annihilate to produce multiple photons as a final state.
So yes there are reactions where a photon can produce mutliple photons, due to conversation of momentum you alas need a further partner to make all this possible and the photon would need to be above 2 electron masses in energy, you can fudge some of these requirements with spontaneous pair production of a quantum vacuum at the expense of event frequency. | [
"To illustrate the significance of these formulae, the annihilation of a particle with its antiparticle in free space must result in the creation of at least \"two\" photons for the following reason. In the center of momentum frame, the colliding antiparticles have no net momentum, whereas a single photon always ha... |
why do tortilla chips not come in individual-sized bags? | Because regular tortilla chips are a bit too bland and dry to eat by themselves and are mostly consumed at parties or a home environment, where they can be dipped in salsa. | [
"Unsalted chips are available, e.g. the longstanding British brand Salt 'n' Shake, whose chips are not seasoned, but instead include a small salt sachet in the bag for seasoning to taste. Many other popular brands in the United States, such as Frito-Lay, also offer such a product.\n",
"Tortilla chips are the quin... |
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