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why hematocrit (ht) is usually three times the hemoglobin (hb)? | Hi there - there’s no mathematical formula behind this, it’s more of an incidental observation.
Haematocrit is the *percentage by volume* of red blood cells in total blood.
Blood can be simply thought to be made up of plasma, which is fluid, white cells and platelets and red blood cells.
Now, haemoglobin ( to define our other term) is measured as the total heamoglobin amount in a sample of blood.
The vast majority of this haemoglobin is found within the red blood cells .
This means that the more red blood cells there are , the more haemoglobin there will be too.
The important thing to realise is that haematocrit is a *percentage value* and haemoglobin is a *simple concentration* - they can’t be compared directly because they are measuring something in very different ways.
The ‘ 3 times’ rule of thumb is a quirk of the units we commonly use to measure haemoglobin (g/dL). If you measured haemoglobin in different units, eg mmol/L, the ‘3 times’ rule wouldn’t apply, and presumably another one would, depend on the rough ratio of the two numbers to each other.
I hope this helps ! | [
"Hemoglobin is involved in the transport of other gases: It carries some of the body's respiratory carbon dioxide (about 20–25% of the total) as carbaminohemoglobin, in which CO is bound to the heme protein. The molecule also carries the important regulatory molecule nitric oxide bound to a globin protein thiol gro... |
If the Earth became subject to another catastrophic event that left nearly everything extinct... | Our sun isn't due to go red giant for another [5 billion years or so](_URL_0_). That's as long as Earth has been around already.
When a mass extinction event occurs what happens is that lots of environmental niches open up - theres lots of food or nutrients suddenly available that are not being used by the now extinct species. That means you get a burst in adaptive radiation. Lots of new species tend to result as localised populations specialise into one of these newly available niches.
Depending how big the extinction event is the recovery time will vary. The biggest extinction event in Earth's history occurred at the Permian/Triassic boundary about 250 million years ago. It's estimated it took [30 million years](_URL_1_) for the ecosystems to fully recover | [
"It was believed that the extinction was due to the climate changes, but human activities as an extinction driver is still possible yet unproven. There is a growing consensus that the extinction of the megafauna was caused by progressive drying starting about 700,000 years ago (700 ka). It is revealed recently that... |
How did warfare change with the introduction of the flintlock musket? | A bit of clarification is needed here - is your question about the impact of;
A) The introduction of the *musket* - a gunpowder-based smoothbore projectile weapon that could be handled and operated by a single soldier
B) The introduction of *flintlock mechanisms* - every firearm needs a method of igniting the gunpowder to propel the projectile and flintlock mechanisms were a step forward in the reliability of muskets. It would be quite hard to look at the effect of their introduction, since they were introduced slowly, with many armies having a mix of weapons, and the musket as a whole was always subject to further refinements in technology and use.
So that's not really an answer yet, apologies. I'll be back with my books in a few hours and can give you more then if you can talk about what you're after. | [
"Firearms using some form of flintlock mechanism were the main form of firearm for over 200 years. It was not until Reverend Alexander John Forsyth invented a rudimentary percussion cap system in 1807 that the flintlock system began to decline in popularity. The percussion ignition system was more weatherproof and ... |
When measuring astronomical distances do we take into account the distance the object has traveled during the time it took the light to reach us? | Not usually, no. Most astronomical distances are rounded. Typically the numbers are so large that people just say things like "millions of light years." | [
"BULLET::::- NASA astronomers report that the Hubble Space Telescope can now precisely measure distances up to 10,000 light-years away by using spatial scanning, a ten-fold improvement over earlier measurements. ()\n",
"There is no evidence that Rømer thought that he was measuring : he gives his result as the tim... |
What happens to a ship that sinks? | Why would it be flattened? I think you misunderstand how water pressure works. Water pressure presses in on all sides rather than pressing down like a giant anvil. The structural stresses induced in a large ship as it sinks will break it into pieces, and compartments containing air will likely implode, but the pieces will just drift to the bottom and sit there for decades. Over time, the pieces will corrode and get covered with marine life. If you are curious about more details regarding what happens when a very large ship sinks out in the open ocean, then the [Titanic wreck](_URL_0_) is very well documented. | [
"The immediate cause of the sinking appears to have been a build-up of sea-water in the hull, when the fire-fighters were trying to extinguish a fire in the engine-room. This was compounded by design faults inherent in Ro/Ro vessels, where minor flooding of the deck can gain rapid momentum due to a mechanism known ... |
Can we create ball lightning artificially? | Not a scientist at all.
It’s not well understood and it looks like it’s not even completely accepted as a naturally occurring phenomenon. Therefore there’s no way to recreate “natural” ball lightning because no one knows exactly how it happens in nature. There are however theories explaining how it happens and corresponding ways to create similar effects in a lab.
[Vaporized dirt](_URL_1_)
[Rydberg matter](_URL_0_)
[The Skyrmion](_URL_2_) | [
"Scientists have long attempted to produce ball lightning in laboratory experiments. While some experiments have produced effects that are visually similar to reports of natural ball lightning, it has not yet been determined whether there is any relation.\n",
"Seward proposes that ball lightning is a spinning pla... |
Does a simple fire emit ultraviolet light? lf no, then how does our sun do so? Ks it a matter of thermonuclear fusion, or something else? | The light radiated by a hot object has a central maximum at a wavelength determined by its absolute temperature and intensity falls off on both sides with a characteristic shape. In principle UV will be present at any temperature but at low temperatures very little. The atoms at the sun surface are very hot and so emit a lot of UV. | [
"A fire emits radiation, which human eye experiences as the visible yellow red flames and heat. In fact, during a fire, relatively sparsely UV energy and visible light energy is emitted, as compared to the emission of Infrared radiation. A non-hydrocarbon fire, for example, one from hydrogen, does not show a CO pea... |
Question re: First Battle of the Marne (WW 1) | The major thing is that taking Paris was not going to be some cake walk. Liege was hopelessly outnumbered and double pincered and it still took the Germans something of over a week to neutralize them fully. Paris was Liege on steroids. Shit Paris was Verdun on steroids. Fortresses that unlike Liege were supported by a functionally sized armies and artillery.
The siege of Paris would have looked more like Verdun c. 1916 than anything else. This is doubly so because the German forces were not only at nearly half strength but also were outnumbered by French artillery with a factor 2:1. Triple so considering that the French 6th army was newly formed in there and at full strength.
The simple fact is that the plan was a sucker punch, a gamble. It was a gamble that they also thought they were winning; they bad thoroughly bought into their own little fantasy of a Cannae repeat. They thought the French army was in total and utter route so rather than slow the offensive down the plan was to speed up. To crush them. The simple reality is that they were not thinking very rationally. But it was a nigh unwinnable situation regardless if the seiged or not.
If you would like a great work on this check out Holger Herwigs *The Marne: The Opening of the First World War*, it handles the lead up to this battle and the details of why the Germans failed in depth. | [
"The Battle of the Marne (, also known as the Miracle of the Marne, \"Le Miracle de la Marne\") was a World War I battle fought from It resulted in an Allied victory against the German armies in the west. The battle was the culmination of the German advance into France and pursuit of the Allied armies which followe... |
What was Eastern warfare like? | The Art of War by Sun Tzu, The Mongol Art of War by Timothy May, and Southeast Asian Warfare, 1300-1900 by Michael W. Charney.
Edit: Mongols used psychological warfare, such as committing genocide after defeating a nation to show what would happen if one opposed the Khan. Genghis made scouts and guards of nightly camps set up twice the amount of torches and drag things behind them to appear to have a much more massive force than he really did.
Tamerlane built a pyramid out of 90,000 human heads outside of Delhi in order to convince them to surrender. The Mongols also practiced biological warfare, flinging body parts, including heads and whole bodies, into cities they were laying siege to. This helped spread the Bubonic Plague to Europe. | [
"The war in the East began with Russian invasion of East Prussia (1914) and the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia. The first ended in a Russian defeat by the German Empire in the Battle of Tannenberg (1914). In the west, a Russian Expeditionary Force was dispatched to France in 1915.\n",
"Recreating the Easter... |
what causes those moments of slight lightheadedness that feel out-of-body/surreal | This may or may not be what you're talking about, but as someone stated below it sounds like switching from a sitting or prone position to standing really fast. This can cause a lightheaded feeling known as orthostatic hypotesnion or temporary low blood pressure. Your body takes a short time to adjust to the change in position in order to deliver blood to your brain effectively and keep you conscious. Since your brain is temporarily deprived of optimal oxygen you get this lightheaded feeling. In some people (namely those who are dehydrated and or are on a high dose of blood pressure medicine) this actually does cause syncope (a fainting spell). | [
"Flicker vertigo, sometimes called the Bucha effect, is \"an imbalance in brain-cell activity caused by exposure to low-frequency flickering (or flashing) of a relatively bright light.\" It is a disorientation-, vertigo-, and nausea-inducing effect of a strobe light flashing at 1 Hz to 20 Hz, approximately the freq... |
what is the reasoning behind the texas law that says it’s illegal for a person serving (jail) time or out on probation to vote l in a political election ? | I imagine they want to keep people who break laws from influencing the law itself.
But the end result is just a method to disenfranchise whatever population you want to persecute. | [
"The Texas law was struck down because it was found to discriminate against black and Hispanic voters. A North Carolina law was overturned as \"its provisions deliberately target African-Americans with almost surgical precision … in an effort to depress black turnout at the polls.\" North Carolina appealed to the U... |
why do so many people catch lobsters out of the ocean. isn't it easier and cheaper to raise them in a farm? | As I understand it, lobster larvae take a long time to mature, as well as requiring a lot of food.
But a more likely reason is that there was never a need to because of the massive lobster population off the coasts of places like New England. Only in recent years has the lobster population began to rapidly decline.
I remember hearing somewhere that in the 1700s they had to make laws prohibiting slave owners from feeding slaves lobster more than 5 days a week due to how easy it was to get. (citation needed) | [
"A large amount of the seafood that is consumed by people living in the United States does not always come from legal fishing. Americans eat an estimated 5 billion pounds of seafood every year. Lobsters, which are a well-known seafood dish, are highly requested in American restaurants. Since lobsters have to be imp... |
how a newton's cradle knows how many balls you have pulled from one side to replicate the motion on the other side? | A single ball moving twice as fast would satisfy conservation of momentum but not conservation of energy.
Each ball has mass 1kg, and the two balls pulled back and released have speed 1m/s when they hit the third and fourth balls.
Kinetic energy of the system = 0.5mv^2 =0.5x2x1= 1
Total energy of system= 1 + GPE (gravitational potential)
If one ball flew out at twice the speed, v=2 m=1, then initial kinetic energy (just as ball starts moving) would be:
KE = 0.5x1x2^2 =2
Total energy=2 + GPE
GPE is the same in both cases so we see that energy is not conserved.
The only way for conservation of energy and momentum is for the same number of balls to come out as went in. | [
"Newton's cradle can be modeled with simple physics and minor errors if you incorrectly assume the balls always collide in pairs. If one ball strikes four stationary balls that are already touching, the simplification can't explain the resulting movements in all five balls, which are not due to friction losses. For... |
when planets are visible from earth, why do they appear as stars to us on the surface of earth? | They're reflecting light from the sun, just like the moon does. Now imagine that the moon was much further away- you wouldn't see all the craters on it. You'd just see a white dot, which could look like a star. That's the same thing that's happening with the planets. They're just so far away that they look white. | [
"Five planets can be recognized as planets from Earth with the naked eye: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Under typical dark sky conditions Uranus (magnitude +5.8) can be seen as well with averted vision, as can the asteroid Vesta at its brighter oppositions. The Sun and the Moon—the remaining noticeable... |
what is with americans and the importance of not impeding the mail? | Commerce (especially before the invention of the telephone and internet) is *highly* dependent on reliable mail. Orders, payments, instructions to agents, and so forth.
America, if nothing else, is all about keeping business functioning smoothly. Calvin Coolidge famously said "The chief business of America *is* business" | [
"In response to a US Supreme Court ruling (Rowan v. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728 (1970)), the United States Postal Service enables an applicant to obtain a Prohibitory Order, which gives people the power to stop non-governmental organizations from sending them mail, and to demand such organizations remove the co... |
How does artificial food dye not dye your stool/urine? | to answer your question: it doesnt get into the urine or stool because its broken down into non-coloured chemicals during digestion.
& #x200B;
but 'artificial' doesnt really mean much in this context. for example, some people cant digest betanin, found in beets, and it turns their urine reddish (beeturia). Its a 'natural' compound. [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) | [
"In an article published in 2000, Snopes confirmed such a dye did not exist. However a study published by the University of Alberta in 2017 identified urine in hot tubs and swimming pools based on other markers such as acesulfame potassium, used extensively as an artificial sweetener, being passed chemically unchan... |
[Computing] When a hacker gains access to a site's database (with the intent to crack passwords), do they also gain access to the hashing function? | The code of the website will contain references to the hashing function used. After all, the website will have to execute this function whenever someone tries to log in. In addition, the size of the hash can give some indication as to the hashing function use as different functions may provide differently sized outputs. And as soon as they know which function was used, it's usually easy to reproduce the function as almost all websites use one of a relatively small set of very well documented hash functions.
But even knowing the hash function should not be a big concern if users have picked strong passwords (high entropy, not in a dictionary, etc...). Due to the sheer number of possible combinations and the fact that hash functions are not reversible (if designed properly), the only way to recover a password from a hash value is to simply brute force the problem and try as many different passwords as possible, hash them and see if the outcome matches the hash that you have.
In order to frustrate these efforts, some websites apply the hash function multiple times. Applying a hash function 100 times makes no difference in speed when a user is trying to log in, but it means that an attacker needs to apply the function 100 times as well during his brute force attempts, effectively slowing him down a considerable amount.
But, even with that measure, if the attacker has a large set of hashed passwords, he can expect to break a decent amount of them in not too much time, because for every attempt he makes, he can compare the outcome to all hashes in the stolen database, so he's not attacking one password at a time, but instead all of them at once, with the weakest passwords typically falling first.
To combat this issue, any decent website or other online service will add a "salt" in the hashing process. Essentially, a salt is a random value that is different for each user and is stored alongside the username and password hash in the database. When the user logs in, instead of simply hashing his password and comparing it to the value in the database, the combination of password and salt is hashed.
The effect of this is that an attacker can no longer easily perform an attack on the entire set of passwords, since even weak passwords are made stronger by the inclusion of the salt. However, since the salt is simply stored in the database, an attacker who is interested in compromising a specific useraccount (as opposed to cracking as many passwords as possible), can simply fetch the salt for this user from the database and take it into account when bruteforcing. So salting slows down attackers trying to crack as many passwords as possible, but does not affect the successrate of an attacker going after a specific target. | [
"With this kind of two-factor authentication, mere knowledge of username and password is not sufficient to break into a user's account; the attacker also needs knowledge of the shared secret key, or physical access to the device running the Authenticator app. An alternative route of attack is a man-in-the-middle at... |
If you put a speaker in a gas with high or low density, would it sound different? | Higher density means higher speed of sound. So the wave will travel farther during each periodic cycle, meaning a longer wavelength. This might make it seem like the sound would be lower pitched. But even though the wavelength is longer, the speed is faster so the frequency doesn't change. Since we hear based on frequency, not wavelength, the pitch should be the same in either case. | [
"For reproduction, the entire surface of the volume would have to be covered with closely spaced loudspeakers, each individually driven with its own signal. Moreover, the listening area would have to be anechoic, in order to avoid sound reflections that would violate source-free volume assumption. In practice, this... |
how does australia now have a new prime minister without an election? | You vote for a representative for your local area. They may or may not belong to a party. The party or coalition with the most support in the lower house (House of Representatives) of parliament is said to form government. Their leader is put forth to the Governor General to be the Prime Minister which is not a Constitutional position. If the GG signs off on it which by convention they do then that person becomes the Prime Minister. If there's a change in the factional support within a party then they present a new person to the Governor General for Prime Minister.
You only vote for your local rep. You don't vote for a party and you don't vote for the Prime Minister (you may if you live in their electorate vote for them but that's only a vote to elect them to a seat in parliament and not as Prime Minister).
At the end of the day Tony Abbott is still a Member of Parliament. He didn't lose his seat. The people who put him in parliament, the voters in his electorate, still have their representative.
Edit- Elections in Australia are held every 3 years at most but can be called earlier. By convention the Prime Minister can ask the Governor General for an earlier elections. The Governor General can also decide to call an early election. This has happened when supply bills have failed to pass (Federal budgets). | [
"Each appointment of a new Prime Minister is considered to result in a new cabinet, irrespective if the Prime Minister is reappointed or not. However, there is no automatic resignation following a defeat in a general election, so an election does not always result in a new cabinet.\n",
"On six occasions in the tw... |
If I put on a coat to stay warm, will that make the room colder for everyone else? | Technically, yes. (But by a very, very tiny amount.) Here's the science:
Assuming that the room is surrounded by an area that is colder (i.e. it has an external wall, and the temperature outside is lower than the temperature inside.) I am also assuming that the room is otherwise not being modified in temperature (no central heating, etc.):
This problem is basically just a differential equation, and explained [here](_URL_0_). The room has an amount of heat in it. The room is losing heat to its surroundings with some rate that is determined by the amount of heat in the room, and the surface area in contact with the outside cold source. The room is gaining heat from the people inside the room. Each person puts out approximately the same amount of heat (in this approximation), but that heating rate is changed by the amount of clothing that they are wearing. Someone in a coat loses heat more slowly to their surroundings than someone without--that's the point of a coat to begin with.
So the heat equilibrium will be based upon loss and gain rates. With a coat on, you have lowered the heat gain rate. The new equilibrium temperature with you wearing a coat (versus without) will thus be lower.
Keep in mind that the difference, on average, will be very small. I wouldn't want to be the graduate student tasked with measuring this. | [
"I have enough to eat till my hunger is stayed, to drink till my thirst is sated; to clothe myself as well; and out of doors not [even] Callias there, with all his riches, is more safe than I from shivering; and when I find myself indoors, what warmer shirting do I need than my bare walls?\n",
"Normal insulation ... |
why do things taste good or bad? why and how do our brains associate certain tastes with being pleasant or nasty? | Sugar tastes good because our sensation of taste comes from adaptations that came about when not getting enough food was the bigger concern.
We have receptors on our tongues that detect certain chemicals. Sugars, sodium, protein, fat, etc. Our brains are built to interpret those things that provide us with calories as tasty, and certain compounds such as bitter things as bad, since bitter was commonly associated with toxins or things going bad in the wild | [
"As taste senses both harmful and beneficial things, all basic tastes are classified as either aversive or appetitive, depending upon the effect the things they sense have on our bodies. Sweetness helps to identify energy-rich foods, while bitterness serves as a warning sign of poisons.\n",
"As taste senses both ... |
What was the first true "Role playing game" | Ive been into strategy gaming since the mid 70s, both using miniatures and board based. I'd be curious if there were any actual 'gaming' historians around, but until one turns up I'll put my 2 cents worth in.
Prior to the 70s most games were either military miniature based, board games, card or 'party' games. I cannot find or recall reference to any game that resembles D & D prior to that date. Not even close. Gygax (and Arnesson) seem like they were certainly original in that sense.
A quick perusal of victorian parlour games information reveals nothing even close.
So I assume that D & D will be it, modified from mediaevel warfare gaming.
Note: Prior to Tolkiens series of books fantasy worlds were quite ephemeral. mystical and tenous in nature. Tolkien turned it into a far more hard edged, brutal and mock-medieval realistic genre, far more suitable for role-play. Non-fantasy role play seems to have come after the fantasy stuff. Bedroom role play is a whole other story, perhaps vertexoflife has more information on that given his/her speciality.
| [
"\"Dungeons & Dragons\" was the first modern role-playing game and it established many of the conventions that have dominated the genre. Particularly notable are the use of dice as a game mechanic, character record sheets, use of numerical attributes and gamemaster-centered group dynamics. Within months of \"Dungeo... |
What happens if you drink a two liter of coke and swallow a mentos whole? | [Not very much](_URL_0_) | [
"A Diet Coke and Mentos eruption (also known as a soda geyser) is a reaction between the carbonated beverage Diet Coke and Mentos mints that causes the beverage to spray out of its container. The gas released by the candies creates an eruption that pushes most of the liquid up and out of the bottle. Lee Marek and \... |
Is it possible a powerful supernova could wipe out the earth with no way to detect its approach? | Not really. The nearest stars are all several light years away, so even if one of the stars that's close enough to be visible to the naked eye went supernova it would only be about as bright as the sun in the sky. The ensuing panic of a second sun might cause some mayhem, but I don't think we can hold the supernova accountable for that. Additionally, you can usually tell if a supernova is about to become visible because a burst of neutrinos will precede it.
More dangerous than a supernova, though, is a gamma ray burst. In some supernova, or when two neutron stars merge, more energy is released in seconds as than the sun releases in its entire lifetime. All of that energy is released as a tight beam of high energy photons so it doesn't expand and dissipate like normal light from a star will. They can be seen with telescopes as flashes from the other side of the universe, and if one was seen from any closer it would end life as we know it. In fact, it's been speculated that a GRB could have been responsible for the Ordovician extinction, and that perhaps life in the universe would be more common if GRBs would stop sterilizing whole chunks of it! Worst of all, you can't see them coming - they travel at the speed of light, so if one was already coming our way we'd have no way of knowing until we're cooked to a crisp.
| [
"Research has suggested that Type Ia supernovae can irradiate the Earth with significant amounts of gamma-ray flux, compared with the typical flux from the Sun, up to distances on the order of 1 kiloparsec. The greatest risk is to the Earth's protective ozone layer, producing effects on life and climate. While SN 1... |
how do animals separate living objects from non living objects? | It's probably quite a hard one to say for sure since we don't know what goes on in animals heads and they are quite different from dolphins to ants ect.
But I think it's safe to assume they for the most part may not have a concept of living and non living as we understand it.
A lot of animals are mainly concerned with, can I eat it and does it want to eat me, as well as relationships with their own kind and so on.
But you could say they probably tell the same way you do, life experiences combined with what it sounds like, what it looks like/how it moves, what it smells and feels like. But then plants are alive, would you think most animals even care?
As for cars I can't answer that, like I said we just don't know what animals think about. | [
"Animals are multicellular eukaryotes, and are distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. All animals are motile, if only at certain life stages. All animals except sponges have bodies differentiated into separate tissues, including muscles, which move parts of the animal by contracting, and... |
when monkeys learn sign language do they just repeat things or do they sign for themselves | Koko, the most famous of the gorillas that learned sign language, did a [live chat](_URL_0_) with people over the internet back in 1998. If you read through it you can tell that it's hard to determine how much exactly she understands, and how much of the conversation is colored by the person doing the interpretation. | [
"A similar debate exists in the controversy over Great Ape language, in which nonhuman primates are said to have learned some aspects of sign languages but the significance of this learning is disputed.\n",
"Koko and Nim Chimpsky are two apes that have successfully learned to use sign language, but not to the ext... |
Askscience special thread - Panelists, what are you working on? | With the Kepler telescope's final death in October, I'm switching over to the new TESS telescope (launched in April) to discover exoplanets. TESS is going to be the next big step in exoplanet science, with the goal of finding planets around close, bright stars so that we can follow up and learn about individual planets' environments and atmospheres in a way that was impossible with the more faint, distant Kepler planets.
The data was kept privately in the beginning as the main team made sure everything was working right, but starting next month all TESS data will be made publicly available to everyone (not just scientists) as soon as it's downloaded back to Earth. I recently made a 1 minute [video](_URL_0_) animating the first month of data that all of us are searching through to find planets. (Mars got in the way of the telescope for a bit and caused some weirdness, which is cool to look at, but annoying to deal with.)
| [
"The forum's members work across the sector, taking in frontline teaching roles to backroom policy and everything in-between. Its members share information through an online discussion group and a regular newsletter.\n",
"The workshops are interdisciplinary gatherings of around 20 experts, primarily academic, but... |
how scripting works and the differences between the different types, i.e.: c, c+, c++, c#, etc... | 'Scripting' often refers to quick and dirty programming tasks, which are often written in so called 'scripting languages'. These include fully functional languages like python and perl, which are much slower than a lower level language than something like C, but in return they're very easy to quickly write a program in and make it very easy to do simple things. In contrast, lower level languages have to include much more code telling the computer exactly *how* to do things as well as just *what* to do, because the language doesn't tell the computer anything about how to guess what you mean. The appropriate language depends on the occasion.
If we follow wikipedia's definition of 'scripting language' precisely, 'A scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications.', and it's most accurate to say that a scripting language is something like 'bash' - a popular example of a 'command line'. Using tools like this you can quickly and easily use many different programs to perform a task, for instance the following in bash...
ls -lathr | grep png
would call the 'ls' program which returns a list of all the files in a directory ordered by date, then the 'grep' program on the output which looks at all the files and returns the ones with 'png' in their name. The important thing exactly what's going on, but that I've written a simple script calling two different programs with different functions to perform a simple task of viewing all the png image files in my directory. (Disclaimer: This is just an example, and not the best way to view png files in your directory).
If you want to learn about programming in general, including any real understanding of how scripting works, the best way is to choose a language and get started. There are many tutorials online for any popular one. An excellent beginners language is [python](_URL_0_); it is very popular so there is lots of help available, it has a relatively simple and intuitive syntax so it's easy to learn, it has many well developed libraries to perform any task, and it also is excellent preparation for a lower level language as it develops the same basic ideas without the messy details. If you can't learn python and then fairly easily move on to another language like C, you'd never have managed to learn that other language in the first place.
If you ask other people questions about starting to program, you'll get 15 different answers from 10 different people depending on what their favourite language is. In reality, anything popular will have plenty of material available for you.
Edit: To answer the bit about all the C variants; C was an early low level computer language. It's a set of instructions that are quite close to telling the computer exactly what to do, so some of the things you do in it involve manipulating the individual 0s and 1s stored in the computer memory. This contrasts to a high level language, where such tasks are generally hidden from the user, which gives increased ease of use but lower potential efficiency of the final program. C++ is an 'improved' version of C with many more features and includes object orientation which is an ELI5 topic in itself. There is no C+ as far as I know. C# is a more modern language supporting more modern ideas with some basis in C-style syntax, but I don't think it has much relationship to C or C++ other than that. | [
"A scripting language is usually interpreted from source code or bytecode. By contrast, the software environment the scripts are written for is typically written in a compiled language and distributed in machine code form.\n",
"A scripting language is a high-level programming language that is used to control the ... |
Why do tightrope walkers carry a long beam? | In addition to what has been said before, the beam significantly increases the walkers rotational inertia around the rope axis. So the same small imbalance in center of mass causes much less acceleration with the beam in hand. The walker has to react much less quickly to correct his position. | [
"Tightrope walking, also called funambulism, is the skill of walking along a thin wire or rope. It has a long tradition in various countries and is commonly associated with the circus. Other skills similar to tightrope walking include slack rope walking and slacklining.\n",
"Tightwire-walkers typically perform in... |
How the hell do siphonophores work? | Siphonophores are a type of hydrozoan. Probably the best known hydrozoan is a [hydra](_URL_2_), a small freshwater animal that's similar to a sea anemone. I'm going to start off talking about hydras to explain the basics, since they are like a highly simplified siphonophore, and then move on to the real thing.
Take a look at pictures of hydra, and they will tell you a couple of important things. The first is the body plan of the hydra. Body plan is the basic shape of an animal...for example, the land-vertebrate body plan includes a head, four limbs, and a gut running through the body. A hydra is simpler, it's basically a bag with tentacles around the open end.
The second thing to note is that most hydras you see in pictures have a bud or two coming off of them. Basically, the hydra has a smaller hydra sticking off the side. This will eventually grow big enough, drop off, and become a new independent hydra. This is one way hydras reproduce.
Fundamentally, a siphonophore is not that different from a hydra where the buds do not fall off, but instead remain attached to the body. The different buds develop into different, specialized shapes that may be used for movement, defense, feeding, or reproduction, but they all share the same basic "bag shape" body plan of the hydra. This is why they are zooids and not organs...each individual zooid is a copy of the basic hydra body plan...imagine if your arm, for example, had its own tiny mouth and gut and limbs.
Siphonophore colonies are basically a string of zooids, usually hanging from a float. [This page](_URL_4_) explains the body plan. The float is at the top, then there's usually a chain of specialized zooids that propel the colony, finally there's a chain of feeding and reproductive polyps. You can see this well in [this pic](_URL_0_), there's a nub at the top, that'd be the float, the pneumatophore. Immediately following this is a chain of propulsive zooids, the nectophores, and then down below is an orange, stringy clump of feeding and reproductive polyps. There's a growth zone where these zooids are budded off.
Really, all this is explained beautifully in [this video](_URL_3_) I just found. **If you don't do anything else, just watch the video, seriously it's great**.
Some other notes:
these things aren't actually multispecies, despite the zooids being very different from each other.
You know how I said siphonophores usually have three parts: float, propulsive polyps, and then the feeding/reproduction polyps? Portuguese man of war have a huge float but no propulsive polyps, and the feeding/reproductive polyps stay more in a clump rather than extending into a chain.
Glaucus marginatus isn't actually a siphonophore, it's a mollusk. It _eats_ siphonophores though, and steals their stinging pneumaticysts for its own defense. They are tolerant to the stinging poison but also have a slime that helps keep the pneumaticysts from firing. They eat the unfired ones and transport them through branches in their gut to the those frills that stick out of their body, and can shoot them out to defend themselves from there. [here's a link](_URL_1_) with a good explanation. | [
"\"Perophora viridis\" is a filter feeder. It draws water in through the buccal siphon and food particles such as bacteria and zooplankton get trapped in a mucus net that lines the pharynx. This gets rolled up and moved along by cilia and passes into the gut where digestion takes place. The anus is near the atrial ... |
What impact did the V2/A4 Rocket have on WWII? | Overall, the V2 rocket had a negligible impact on the war, although it had potential. From over 3,000 rockets fired on Britain, only about 7,500 civilians died as a result. This was partially due to an act of deception by British, who managed to direct many of the rockets away from London. The accuracy of the V2 rockets was generally horrible, although the rockets that hit had devastating effects. However, by the end of the conflict scientists had developed a pretty sophisticated radio guidance system which greatly increased their effectiveness. However, the war ended before the system was implemented on a widespread basis. Ultimately far more slave laborers would die in the V2 factories than any intended casualties. It can be argued that the enormous amount of money in the V2 program could have been better spent elsewhere, but I would say that given a few more years the program could have become extremely deadly, as the Germans were essentially inventing guided cruise missiles long before anyone else. The V2 program was designed to both boost German morale as a "vengeance weapon" in retaliation for bombing strikes and a terror weapon for civilians on the receiving end, in which respect it was quite effective. A V2 blast could crate a crater 8m deep and 20m wide, terrifying to behold. | [
"Unlike the V-2, the V-1 was a cost-effective weapon for the Germans as it forced the Allies to spend heavily on defensive measures and divert bombers from other targets. More than 25 per cent of Combined Bomber Offensive's bombs in July and August 1944 were used against V-weapon sites, often ineffectively. In earl... |
How rapidly (or not) does a newborn star "ignite" once it reaches critical mass? Hours, days, years? | It happens so gradually there isn't a clear moment of "ignition".
Protostars are glowing hot long before any fusion starts. As they collapse under their own weight they heat up, as any gas will when you compress it. At this phase, the protostar is converting its gravitational potential energy into heat, which provides the pressure that slows its collapse.
As the core continues to compress and heat up, it gradually approaches temperatures where fusion reactions start to become possible. Over many thousands of years, fusion slowly becomes the dominant energy source, replacing the collapse in heating the star. This causes the surface to stop contracting, and the star achieves a stable equilibrium where the fusion at its core produces enough thermal pressure to exactly balance the weight of its gas. This lasts until it runs out of hydrogen to fuse. | [
"The protostar at first only has about 1% of its final mass. But the envelope of the star continues to grow as infalling material is accreted. After 10,000–100,000 years, thermonuclear fusion begins in its core, then a strong stellar wind is produced which stops the infall of new mass. The protostar is now consider... |
is there a reason the color blue doesn’t appear very often in nature? | Edited, because hoo boy did I get this wrong/backwards and wow I am so sorry folks. Don't answer science posts drunk, my friends!
For people who want the answer quick:
*Red* was a later color to evolve in eyesight for a lot of animals, because most plants are green and brown, and dirt/dead stuff is also often brown. Because of that, when animals were camoflaging themselves, especially on land, they evolved to be brown, yellow, or red. Because the animals couldn't see red, that red looked brown. However, they could tell the difference between blue and green because it helped them pick apart their surroundings (ex. A tasty plant is a lot easier to find when it's not the same color as the rest of the ocean). So, an animal that looked too blue in green or brown surroundings would stick out and be eaten.
The late appearance of seeing red is likely because colors other than green aren't super common in plants. This is thanks to the most efficient kind of chlorophyll, green chlorophyll. Even though our sun makes more green light than other colors, the light that chlorophyll gets energy from are red and blue wavelengths! That's why plants are usually green, is because it's the wavelength they reflect. Lots of animals *can* see blue, like dogs and cats (and us!). Even cooler, lots of animals can see light that *we can't* and have colors on their bodies for that. For instance, butterflies can have UV markings on their wings!
Of course, there are some animals that are still blue. Usually this is because it was helpful for them to find mates. For reasons still puzzling, blue pigments didn't generally arise in animals, and possibly because of this, *green* pigments are also very rare. Many of the green animals you see are actually yellow pigmented, with special blue structures built in!
This is because (for some reason) it was easier to make blue by making the light shining on them reflect blue with these special structures on feathers, scales, or even in skin like with the poison dart frog, instead of with a pigment. Any time a new trait arises, evolution can find some really cool ways to build those DNA blueprints that you wouldn't expect. This is a very good example. | [
"The title 'blue' arose because there are minute particles of clay in colloidal suspension within the water. These suspensions variously diffract the light depending on the particles' size (with differences in size often linked to changes in concentration and pH), yielding colours from red-brown, through grey and g... |
Why didn't the Imperial Japanese Navy commit more conventional surface forces to the attack on Pearl Harbor | Because the Japanese fleet was operating at the limit of its endurance as it was, and the raid was intended from the start to be a raid, not a sustained battle.
I've written more about the Pearl Harbor attack before, [here](_URL_1_) and /u/parksungjun tackled it [here](_URL_0_). To briefly summarize those couple of posts, the goal of the Pearl Harbor attack was to knock out the American fleet at Pearl Harbor to buy the Japanese time to build a defensive perimeter in the western Pacific. To do that, the Pearl Harbor attack was coordinated with other raids on American, British and Dutch possessions all over the western Pacific, which tied down other Japanese military assets. The Pearl Harbor attack was a means to an end, not an end in itself. | [
"The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) sought naval superiority in the Pacific by sinking the main American battle fleet at Pearl Harbor, which was tactically centered around its battleships. The December 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor did knock out the battle fleet, but it did not affect the three U.S. aircraft c... |
Adam's Apple | The Adam's Apple, or laryngeal prominence is simply a protrusion of thyroid cartilage.
Women have the exact same cartilage, but because the male larynx lowers and enlarges more than the female during puberty it creates a sharper angle that causes this cartilage to protrude further than in women. | [
"Adam's Apple is a 1928 British silent comedy film directed by Tim Whelan and starring Monty Banks, Lena Halliday and Judy Kelly. An American on his honeymoon in Paris, organises the kidnapping of his interfering mother-in-law. It was made by British International Pictures at their Elstree Studios.\n",
"The Golde... |
taurine, its role in bodily functions, and why it is in energy drinks | It's an amino acid which is widely distributed in the tissues of the body and manufactured by the body if the person has a normal diet. It is in energy drinks because the manufacturers make money using a version of the following fallacious argument: X is essential to physiological system Y, our product contains X, therefore our product will improve performance of physiological system Y. | [
"Taurine has many biological roles, such as conjugation of bile acids, antioxidation, osmoregulation, membrane stabilization, and modulation of calcium signaling. It is essential for cardiovascular function, and development and function of skeletal muscle, the retina, and the central nervous system. Taurine is a co... |
why do anti-biotics have to be taken at regular intervals? | The goal is to keep the amount of the antibiotic in your system consistently high. If you were to just take a dose and then throw the rest away, the only bacteria that it would kill would be those not well adapted to deal with the antibiotic. Those with adaptations that allow for some degree of resistance would still be there and take their place. In order to ensure that you're not essentially breeding antibiotic resistant bacteria in your body you need to keep the treatment up consistently for a long time. | [
"In recent years, drug companies have worked together to combine these complex regimens into simpler formulas, termed fixed-dose combinations. For instance, there are now several options that combine 3 or 4 drugs into one pill taken once daily. This greatly increases the ease with which they can be taken, which in ... |
why is the body of a 400-lb person able to carry around 200 lbs extra day after day, but a healthy 200-lb person who weight trains extensively would be exhausted carrying 200 lbs for an hour? | A 400lb man's weight is centralized to his frame, spread throughout his entire body. There would probably be excess around his mid frame, which causes a lot of overweight men to have back problems.
because of this increase in mass, the overweight person has more blood with which to oxygenate his muscles, making it possible for him to heft his heavier body around.
I postulate that a 200lb man that is in peak physical condition could indeed carry 200lbs around with him all day if the weight was closely tied to his frame, such as with a weight vest. Because the weight would not throw off his center of balance, fatigue would be much lower.
Carrying around a 200lb backpack is not about the extra weight, but the rotational forces it places on your spine due to changing your center of gravity so much. | [
"Loads for equids are disputed. The US Army specifies a maximum of 20 percent of body weight for mules walking up to 20 miles a day in mountains, giving a load of up to about 150 kg. However an 1867 text mentioned a load of up to 800 pounds (about 360 kg). In India, the prevention of cruelty rules (1965) limit mule... |
What happens if several historians write about the same topic/historical event? | No work of history exists in a vacuum, and needs to acknowledge the ways in which it relies on the work of others. But for academic writing at least, it's expected that the thesis at least will be original - that is, you are making an argument that previous work hasn't, and are not just restating what we already know. While you may draw on the same primary source base as previous scholarship in order to do so, the way you use those sources will be different, leading to different conclusions. In turn, your work needs to be as clear as possible about how the thesis is original, by contextualising your approach in relation to earlier work. Definitely don't just ignore it, but equally there's no need to recount every point of similarity - focus on why what you're doing is different.
There are three broad ways this tends to happen with regards to primary material. One is through discovery - locating new sources that shines new light on the question, changing what we know about the subject. Depending on the topic, this can be hard. The second is methodological - changing how you use and think about sources in order to learn different things from the same source base, even reinterpreting and challenging previous usage. Lastly, it can be a question of depth - previous work has dealt with a subject only in passing, and you are building our knowledge of the subject further by researching and analysing these sources in more detail. In this case, it's incumbent on you to explain why more depth is useful. | [
"Articles on major historical events are often preceded by ironic articles criticizing the irresponsibility that led to such events: For example, an issue dated a week before the 1929 crash of the American stock market heralds the market as \"invincible\" and urges readers to \"put everything they have into the sto... |
why does my car's battery die after a month without being driven? | If your car has an alarm it's going to be using the battery for power | [
"All batteries gradually self-discharge (whether installed in a device or not) and dead batteries will eventually leak. Extremely high temperatures can also cause batteries to rupture and leak (such as in a car during summer) as well as decrease the shelf life of the battery.\n",
"SLI batteries (starting, lightin... |
If 2 space ships accelerated away from each other at 1/2 the speed of light, what would they see behind them? | Let's answer this question two ways. First, let's set up the question differently. Imagine a space station, with two space ships. The space ships then leave the space station, moving 0.5c with respect to the space station. The question is: what does someone on the space station see, and what does someone on the space ship see?
Well, someone on the space station has it easy. He will simply see the ships separating at 1c, as each are leaving away from him at 0.5c. This is not a problem, since he is not seeing any single massive object leaving at a speed greater than c. I understand that this part might be obvious, but it gives us a reference point.
Now, what does someone on a spaceship see? Well, they will see the other space ship moving away at 0.8c. This can be calculated using the [relativistic velocity-addition formula](_URL_0_). Where does this come from? Well, as Einstein showed, the speed of light is the same in all reference frames. There are several consequences of this- the ones being important here are time dilation and length contraction. What this means is, a person on the space ship and a person on the space station will not measure time or distances the same way. The person on the space ship will have his clock running slower, and will measure distances shorter, than the person on the space station. So, he is measuring that the second ship is closer to him, and it took a different amount of time to get there, and thus will measure his speed to be less than the speed of light. | [
"Explanations of why ships can travel faster than light in hyperspace vary; hyperspace may be smaller than real space and therefore a star ship's propulsion seems to be greatly multiplied, or else the speed of light in hyperspace is not a barrier as it is in real space. Whatever the reasoning, the general effect is... |
If low temperatures slow down cells, do people who live in cold climates have a longer life expectancy? | You should probably remember that humans are warm blooded, which means they all operate at around 37 degrees Celsius. | [
"It has been theorised that low body temperature may increase lifespan. In 2006, it was reported that transgenic mice with a body temperature 0.3–0.5 C lower than normal mice lived longer than normal mice. This mechanism is due to overexpressing the uncoupling protein 2 in hypocretin neurons (Hcrt-UCP2), which elev... |
how does a toxicology test work? | Using analytic equipment. There are machines called Mass Spectrometers that take a sample, and can display the mass, and rough percentage of how much of the sample is comprised of the given compound.
So if I run a blood sample through a typical gas chromatography mass Spectrometer (or GCMS for short) for a drug test or something, all I have to do is look through the printout to find stuff with the same mass as common drugs (or their metabolites) to determine whether or not you ingested drugs. Mass spec doesn't give names or anything on an analysis, you need to know the mass of what you're looking for to pick it out of the list, and even then, there's lots of funny reasons you will see head scratching data. | [
"Toxicology testing, also known as safety assessment, or toxicity testing, is conducted to determine the degree to which a substance can damage a living or non-living organisms. It is often conducted by researchers using standard test procedures to comply with governing regulations, for example for medicines and pe... |
Many americans apparantly moved to the Soviet Union in the early 1930s. How well did they adapt to Soviet life? Did they survive the great purge? | There's a lot more to say on the subject (a couple books' worth at least!), but for starters you might want to check out an [answer](_URL_0_) I wrote recently on the topic. | [
"Despite all of this, The Great Depression caused mass immigration to the Soviet Union, mostly from Finland and Germany. Soviet Russia was at first happy to help these immigrants settle, because they believed they were victims of capitalism who had come to help the Soviet cause. However, when the Soviet Union enter... |
how come when you use a faucet in tall buildings, water comes out? how does it 'flow upwards'? | There is always a pump. | [
"Water from the surrounding area – including a number of local springs and streams – is collected in a cistern, which is above the level of the top of the wheel. A closed pipe connects the cistern to the top of the wheel; thus the water flows up the tower as an inverted syphon. The water falls from the pipe into th... |
Is menopause an artifact? As in people did not used to live that long so the body never evolved to produce eggs in twilight years. | There are a couple hypotheses out there, falling in two main camps. The first supports a kin selection model where the grandmother enhances the survival of her grandchildren (and thus 1/4 of her genetic material) by helping helping them rather than continuing to reproduce herself. The second asserts that, given the social structure of humans, menopause prevents competition among related females that could lead to reduced survival. Apparently some whales and dolphins also undergo menopause, and there is a paper looking at the phenomenon in both from an evolutionary perspective. Both hypotheses are are really two sides of the same kin selection coin, and I might consider your "artifact hypothesis" to be consistent with a more non-selectionist paradigm (i.e. menopause is not an adaptation but the result of other constraints on human reproductive physiology and the lack of historical selection on the fecundity of older women). | [
"The theories discussed above assume that evolution directly selected for menopause. Another theory states that menopause is the byproduct of the evolutionary selection for follicular atresia, a factor that causes menopause. Menopause results from having too few ovarian follicles to produce enough estrogen to maint... |
During the 1974 World Cup in West Germany, were East Germans allowed to enter West Germany/Berlin to support their team? | According to [this article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung](_URL_1_) from 2006 the average GDR citizen was not allowed to attend games during the World Cup in West Germany. Instead fans were handpicked when "worthy and reliable". According to the article "hundreds of Stasi agents [...] dressed as football fans" were brought to the stadium in Hamburg with two trains to show support for the GDR.
[East Germany won 1-0 against West Germany](_URL_2_)
Edit: [Low-res screenshot of GDR fans celebrating Jürgen Sparwasser's winning goal](_URL_0_)
| [
"The West German embassy in Stockholm was occupied by the Red Army Faction in 1975. In 1989 its embassies in Budapest and Prague sheltered fleeing East Germans while waiting for permission to travel onwards to West Germany; permission was subsequently given by the Czechoslovakian and Hungarian governments, accelera... |
Capturing ships? | Prize policy and prize law are *massive* subjects in maritime history, so I won't be able to give you a completely comprehensive answer. I'll focus mostly on the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy roughly between 1800 and 1900. This, of course omits major seafaring nations like the Netherlands, Spain, and France, although they certainly took prizes and used prize crews.
After the gunsmoke cleared, a captain could consider himself very fortunate indeed if he'd managed to capture an enemy ship.
**Here's a short answer:** Usually, a prize crew would be sent over to the surrendered enemy vessel. A typical prize crew consisted of 1-2 officers and a small group of petty officers and seamen. This small group of men had a great deal to do. They had to take the enemy crew prisoner and put them to work or lock them belowdecks. It wasn't uncommon for prisoners to try and overpower the small prize crew, so they had to be constantly vigilant. They had to repair any battle damage and get their prize seaworthy again. If their prize had been dismated or badly-damaged, they might be towed back to port. Otherwise, they had to navigate their prize to a friendly port on their own.
If they were lucky, they'd make it safely back to friendly shores. In the Royal Navy of the 18th and 19th century, the prize would be sold off to private buyers or bought by the Royal Navy itself. This prize money was then given to the officers and men responsible for taking the ship.
**Here's a longer answer:** Getting a prize home in one piece was much easier said than done. Depending on how the battle had gone, a commander's newly-captured prize could be a battered hulk or in pristine condition.
After a one-on-one frigate action or a major fleet action, the losers who didn't escape were often in pretty bad shape. This sometimes meant a prize couldn't be kept.
During the War of 1812, the 44-gun frigate USS *Constitution* encountered the 38-gun HMS *Guerrière* off Cape Race. Their August 19th clash became a legend in the young U.S. Navy. Captain Isaac Hull brought *Constitution* "within pistol shot" of the British frigate. After a long and bitter fight, *Constitution's* point-blank cannon fire dismasted *Guerrière* and left her adrift. The British warship was in bloody ruins, with 25 percent of her men dead or wounded. Now that his ship was out of control and he was unable to train her broadsides, British Captain James Dacres struck his colors and surrendered.
However, Hull did not immediately board and take *Guerrière.* American sailors had learned the hard way that Britannia still ruled the waves. USS *Wasp* had been taken by HMS *Poictiers* while she'd lingered over a newly-captured prize. So Hull pulled *Constitution* away and prepared for a second fight.
Only then did Hull send his third lieutenant George Read across to capture the frigate. With *Guerrière,* dismasted, she had to be fitted with a jury mast or taken under tow. But by now, the extent of *Guerrière's* damage was even more apparent. *Constitution's* big 24-pounder guns had shattered structural timbers and punched 30 holes below her waterline. Hull wisely decided to abandon the ship. *Guerrière's* crew were taken aboard the American ship as prisoners. Then the British hulk was set alight, eventually exploding when the flames reached her magazine.
Badly-damaged prizes were also at the mercy of Mother Nature. By the end of the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, the Royal Navy had captured 22 Spanish and French warships. But before the British could secure their prizes, a massive gale blew up.
Nelson had wanted to anchor the fleet and ride out the storm. In fact, one of Nelson's last words were "Anchor, Hardy, anchor! Do you anchor, Hardy? If I live, I'll anchor..."
But the new fleet commander Lord Collingwood decided against anchoring. A portion of the Franco-Spanish fleet had escaped nearly intact. He didn't want to subject his battle-weary and disorganized men-o'-war to a fight they might lose. Hia fear was valid, over the next few days, French and Spanish ships menaced the fleet and its stragglers on several occasions, making salavge operations difficult.
Unfortunately, the storm struck before the British could get their fleet and its prizes to safety. In the gale, the dismasted French 74-gun *Fougueux* snapped her towline. Out of control and already flooding from battle damage, the man-o'-war drifted towards the rocks. Frantically, the crew of the frigate HMS *Phoebe* tried to connect another towline. Sadly, they were too late. *Fougueux* smashed into the rocks and broke apart, taking with her most of her imprisoned former crew and the prize crew from HMS *Temeraire.*
The next few days were filled with other dramas aboard the captured French and Spanish ships. The French *Algésiras* had been boarded by Lieutenant Charles Bennett and fifty men. Bennett's small boarding party was overwhelmed by the extent of the damage and unable to make her seaworthy. Dismasted and uncontrollable, she drifted for nearly a day. Occupied by the storm and the risk of a French counter-attack, the rest of the British fleet did not come to her aid. Realizing their ship was about to founder, the French crew bloodlessly retook the ship from Bennett's small prize crew. The French crew managed to jury rig some rigging and lower their remaining anchor. Amazingly, the French crew managed to save their crippled ship. The British prize crew faced the curious reversal of being taken prisoner after the greatest British naval victory in history. After some time in captivity they'd eventually be exchanged for Spanish prisoners.
As the storm worsened, more and more prizes were lost or struggled to survive. Their fates perfectly illustrate the multitude of fates that could await a captured man-o'-war and her crew.
The crews of several ships overwhelmed their British prize crews, albeit to little avail. For example, *Neptuno's* crew took back their ship, but had to hastily escape their sinking ship in rafts they built with the help of the British crew.
*Santa Ana* had better luck and was recaptured by the Spanish fleet.
By now, Collingwood decided to cur his losses to the worsening storm and signalled: "Prepare to quit and withdraw men from prizes after having destroyed or disabled them if time permits."
The monstrous 140-gun *Santisima Trinidad,* the largest man-o'-war ever built, was still covered in blood from the battle. Although the British had managed to keep her under tow throughout the storm, she also filling with water faster than the Spanish seamen could pump out of her. At this point, it's worth noting that captured enemy crews were not always locked up by their prize crews. Sailing ships took huge amounts of manpower to run and a small prize crew simply couldn't do the job on their own, so captured crews were put to work aboard their former ship. Having surrendered, the officers gave their word of honor that they would not attempt to retake their ship. Sometimes this word was ignored and the crews would try to retake their ship. They didn't much look forwards to rotting away in a prison hulk. Sometimes this was violated only *in extremis*, when the ship seemed in danger of sinking and no aid was coming, as in the case of *Neptuno*. Usually, however, the crew observed the terms of their surrender and tried to save their ship. However, it became clear *Santisima Trinidad* was beyond saving. Her British prize crew deserted her, taking her surviving Spanish crew with her. A few minutes after the last boat shoved of, the massive warship sank, taking 30 badly-wounded men with her.
Other ships were deliberately destroyed. *Intrépide* and *San Augustin* had to be burned and the Spanish *Argonauta* was scuttled.
All in all, only one French ship had sunk during the Battle of Trafalgar. But of the nearly twenty prizes taken by the British, fourteen had been lost after the battle. Only four of the Royal Navy's prizes made it back to England. It's worth noting this was an unusually bad tally brought about by bad circumstances. The weather was bad, dismasted ships blew right back into the Spanish coast to be wrecked or recaptured, and the menace of Franco-Spanish fleet made recovery operations much harder.
The rest of the stories of the lost prizes of Trafalgar are [briefly discussed here](_URL_0_), although I recommend a book like Craig and Clayton's *Trafalgar: The Men, the Battle, the Storm,* if you'd like to know more. They make quite a read!
Continued... | [
"Throughout naval history during times of war battles, blockades, and other patrol missions would often result in the capture of enemy ships or those of a neutral country. If a ship proved to be a valuable prize efforts would sometimes be made to capture the vessel while inflicting the least amount of damage as was... |
why are pages in textbooks divided down the middle or sometimes into three columns? | Simply put, it's easier for people to read short lines without losing track of where they are. If the lines get too long, it's harder to scan back to the beginning of the line without losing track of where you are making it harder to read/comprehend/retain the material.
It's a pretty straightforward typographical principle - optimal line length is in the ballpark of 50-60 characters. Since textbooks have physically larger pages, you use multiple columns of text to keep line lengths manageable. | [
"Where a text is written in horizontal format, pages are read in the same order as English books, with the binding at the left and pages progressing to the right. Vertical books are printed the other way round, with the binding at the right, and pages progressing to the left.\n",
"Text can also be \"centered\", o... |
Other than cost and regulations, what challenges or technological limitations are preventing the rollout of driverless cars to the public? | There was a recent article I can't find right now about the ethics involved in the programing.
For example, say there is a situation where an accident is unavoidable. The computer analyzes the data and determines that the only options are turning right, turning left, or going straight.
Going straight only poses danger to the occupants of the computer-driven car, but has a 100% chance of serious injury and 70% chance of fatality.
Turning right would result in the autonomous car hitting an older, smaller vehicle. This reduces the chances of injury/fatality in the driverless car to 50/30, but has a lower 40/20 for the occupants of the small car.
Turning left would result in hitting a newer, larger vehicle like an SUV. The chances of injury to the driverless car are at 50/30, but to the other car has a 40/20 chance.
A person in the heat of the moment making these choices can't exactly be held responsible the way a programmer who had to consciously make a choice long beforehand while weighing the data. Some programmers are even worried they might be charged with premeditated murder in some jurisdictions because they consciously made that sort of choice.
I tried to find the article, but it's hiding from me very well. [Here's a link to a site on Google talking very briefly about this issue](_URL_0_). | [
"The automation of vehicles could prove to have a substantial impact on the environment, although the nature of this impact could be beneficial or harmful depending on several factors. Because automated vehicles are much less likely to get into accidents compared to human-driven vehicles, some precautions built int... |
how come raw eggs are bad to eat now? 20 years ago, i'd put a raw egg in a milkshake and eat the hell out of cookie/cake/brownie batter. now if i do it, i get sick. what happened? | If you are a healthy person with normal immune system, then raw eggs are just edible as they were before. However people with compromised immune system are more at risk of contracting serious salmonella infection (which is rare, but if it happens it can be life threatening, even on otherwise healthy people). Restaurants and food production companies need to protect themselves from lawsuits, so they need to warn patrons that there might be a danger in eating raw eggs. | [
"Eggs are susceptible to \"Salmonella\" contamination. Thorough cooking eliminates the direct threat (i.e. cooked egg whites that are solid and not runny), the threat of cross-contamination remains if people handle contaminated eggs and then touch other foods or items in the kitchen, thus spreading the bacteria. In... |
Because of the curvature of the Earth, are nearby skyscrapers closer together at the base than they are at the top? | Yes.
If the two 100-floor buildings are one NYC block apart, which is 0.05 mile or 1/500000 of Earth's circumference, their 100th floors, which are .2 mile higher than their first floors, are going to be 2 * .2 mi * pi / 500000 further apart than their first floors, which comes out to .16 inches or 4 mm. | [
"Structural engineers generally consider a skyscraper as slender if the width:height ratio exceeds 1:10 or 1:12. Slim towers require the adoption of specific measures to counter the high strengths of the wind in the vertical cantilever, like including additional structures to endow greater rigidity to the building ... |
What was the shifting nature of authority like during the decline of the "Wild West" in the US? | Since you're correct that this is very broad, and also as I don't think that given you want this research for a script, I don't think that an answer written here would do you justice, so instead allow be to point you in the direction of a source I'd highly recommend. Richard Slotkin's "Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in 20th Century America" is exactly what you're looking for since it not only tackles questions of violence and authority, but looks at how they have entered the American mythos and been communicated to the public through portrayals in literature, film and TV, so quite pertinent for you. He breaks it into several sections, looking at how the myth of the frontier has been used in various periods of time, from the late 1890s on through the Vietnam era, and evaluating the ways that its themes have, in various ways, been molded as "surrogates" for what Americans were dealing with at the time. It's a hefty tome, but quite thorough, and well suited to giving you a better understanding of the topic at hand here, as it offers insight not only into the Frontier, but also into the META narrative of the frontier that your own script will become part of. | [
"According to the research of Terry L. Anderson and P. J. Hill, the Old West in the United States in the period of 1830 to 1900 was similar to anarcho-capitalism in that \"private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved,\" and that the... |
Why is varicella more dangerous to get as you grow older? | Essentially what we know is that the reason varicella is worse/more harmful as you get older is because you’re more likely to suffer complications.
By this I mean everything else other than blisters/rashes, like flu symptoms, high fever, loss of appetite, these kind of complications. Regardless if you’re immunocompromised or not.
Scientists don’t actually know ‘why’ it gets worse, the assumption is that kids immune systems have a lot more phagocytes which will engulf any foreign body. Adults immune systems employ more antibodies rather than phagocytes. So in that aspect, kids immune systems are more aggressive, adults immune systems are less aggressive and rely more on storing information for longer immunity rather than immediate ‘killing’.
Hopefully this is somewhat of a reasonable answer.
(Edit: this information is slightly outdated and is what we knew in 2017, I haven’t really been able to find out anything more recent) | [
"Infection occurs more easily as one ages, as the immune system starts to slow and become less effective. Aging also changes how the immune system reacts to infection, making new infections harder to detect and attack. Essentially, the immune system has a higher chance of being compromised the older one gets.\n",
... |
Why are bulldogs a popular mascot in American collegiate athletics? | because it's known as a very determined breed of dog | [
"Bulldogs have a longstanding association with English culture, as the BBC wrote: \"to many the Bulldog is a national icon, symbolising pluck and determination.\" During World War II, Bulldogs were often likened to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his defiance of Nazi Germany. When the English settled in the Am... |
how is the death penalty seen as justice and not revenge? | Who says it can't be both? The law mandates that crime begets punishment, and execution is seen by many as an appropriate (perhaps the ultimate) punishment.
By that logic, what legal punishment isn't revenge? | [
"Supporters of the death penalty argued that death penalty is morally justified when applied in murder especially with aggravating elements such as for murder of police officers, child murder, torture murder, multiple homicide and mass killing such as terrorism, massacre and genocide. This argument is strongly defe... |
how does a game console know the difference between a retail disc and a burned disc? | A burned disc contains only the directly-readable digital content of the game. Retail discs contain other features - extra tracks not readable by most disc readers, specific wobble in the tracks, error correction codes that don't actually correct errors but instead contain authentication data.
Modchips will return a signal to the main CPU of the console that the disc authenticated as "retail", no matter if the disc contains the authentications features or not, when the CPU asks for the disc to be authenticated. | [
"Discs became popular as the storage medium for console games during the fifth generation due to the ability to store large amounts of data and be produced cheaply. The increase in space provided developers with a medium to store higher quality assets but means they had to take into account that you could not write... |
How are the colors determined in colored space pictures (of planets and galaxies)? | You are asking about 2 different types of photos. In the Mercury case its a false color enhanced photo. After the photo was taken in whatever wavelengths (it might not have been visible light) the data was shifted so that the differences stand out in the visible spectrum. They would take the longest wavelength of valuable data and translate it to the far end of visible red and the shortest and translate that to the far end of visible violet and then everything in between correspondingly to produce the picture you see.
In the case of faint astronomical objects we can do that same translation but there are phenomenon going on also. Your eye sees instantaneously and registers colors in bright light. As things get fainter it switches to a black and white so faint objects almost always appear black and white when viewed directly in telescopes. Green shows up first for the brighter nebula like the Orion nebula. With the naked eye you will never see the colors of the Carina Nebula look as pictured but they are there.
Cameras however do not work like your eye. They record the energy in each photon as it arrives and don't fall back to black and white. So a red photon gets recorded as red, a blue one as blue. Since most photos are taken over time, or many photos are taken and combined this information leads to us seeing colors in the photo we cant see with the naked eye. Its not fake or manipulated its the way cameras work vs your eye.
Then there is the manipulation. Astropotography is an art. Many astronomical photos are taken with several filters; a red, a blue, a green and a luminosity one or taken at different wavelengths. These may not all be visible at the same time. [This photo](_URL_0_images/B & B%20web%20photos/Sun-02-09-01color1.jpg) is a great example. It was created by taking at least 2 photos of the sun in different H-alpha wavelengths. One that show the prominences well and another showed the surface structure well. [Jack Newton](_URL_0_) the photographer then used photoshop to combine the two photos into a single image that showed both features (I actually watched him do this on a similar solar photo). You can never see this image as is directly, you cant see both the prominences and structure at the same time with a telescope however there was no color manipulation done just combining two photos taking at different wavelengths into a single really beautiful one.
The photos you see of the Carina are most likely done this way. Several photos were taken at different wavelengths and with different color filters then merged together to show the best features at all wavelengths at the same time. Its not made up but its also not what you see with your eye. | [
"In astronomy, color–color diagrams are a means of comparing the apparent magnitudes of stars at different wavelengths. Astronomers typically observe at narrow bands around certain wavelengths, and objects observed will have different brightnesses in each band. The difference in brightness between two bands is refe... |
How should common people research about a historical topic? | The reason people accuse "history" of being propaganda is because history is important. People base claims to their identities, their nations, their actions, their morality, and so on, on historical claims. So it is going to be as complicated and fraught as any topic with real "stakes" associated with it.
As for how to go about it as a non-expert: you really have to rely on the community of other experts, the same as you would for claims about medicine, science, or anything else. If you're asking, "how do I know if X is a quality source?," there are several things that can help:
* Is it peer-reviewed? That is, has the work been vetted by other experts?
* Does it follow proper scholarly procedures? That is, does it cite its evidence, and cite the work of other scholars?
* Who is the author? Are they a professional historian, or a political pundit? Where do they work?
* How have others regarded this work or claim? That is, can you find reviews of the book by other scholars?
No single one of the above actually tells you if a source or claim is good or bad. There is non-peer-reviewed work that is solid. There is work by non-scholars that is solid. There are peer-reviewed, scholarly works that are trash. Citations can be very misleading. Book reviews can contradict one another, and so on.
So what's this mean for you? It means: there isn't some simple gold-star "this is the correct story" in history. That's the case _even if you are only talking about academic history_. To use your example: were Lenin and Stalin "great rulers" or "dictators"? (or both?) You can find positions within the academy that will argue both. Scholars disagree with one another, too. The above considerations are useful heuristics to weed out absolute cranks and grifters from the scholars, but they aren't perfect.
Which gets to a bigger and more tricky point: history isn't some static list of facts. There _are_ some facts. There _are_ positions that are better supported by evidence than others. But there is also room for contestation, interpretation, and revision. This is what professional historians do.
Another way to put this is: if someone is telling you that there is one and only one way to interpret the past, be suspicious. If it seems too clean and simple to be realistic in our crazy complex world, be suspicious. If an author can't say, "some people understand this as X, some people understand this as Y, I lean towards Z," beware of their lack of nuance. And, most of all, beware of anyone who claims that every position contrary to their own is "bias" — that by itself is a sign that someone is trying to sell you something, and that's not what the serious study of history is about.
There are resources, like /r/AskHistorians and its [book list](_URL_0_), that try to point people towards sources that experts think are good places to learn about a topic. There is, of course, always room for criticism and debate of such recommendations; real scholars welcome that, and don't try to just shut it down. Most importantly, to understand history well you must read somewhat widely in it — a single book or author is rarely enough. | [
"BULLET::::12. Historical research allows one to discuss past and present events in the context of the present condition, and allows one to reflect and provide possible answers to current issues and problems. Historical research helps us in answering questions such as: Where have we come from, where are we, who are... |
How often a day/month/etc. do stars cease to exist? | On what scale are we talking about?
In our solar system stars die about once every 10 billion years. (We only have one star in our solar system.)
In our Galaxy there are several stars ending their lives at any given moment. Most star deaths take about 10,000-10,000,000 years. Very few are instantaneous. Of those we average about 1 supernova every 1000 years, but 20-60 novas every 100 years.
On the scale of our local supercluster of galaxies the number of supernovas is about 1 per day. | [
"By (100 trillion) years from now, star formation will end. This period, known as the Degenerate Era, will last until the degenerate remnants finally decay. The least massive stars take the longest to exhaust their hydrogen fuel (see stellar evolution). Thus, the longest living stars in the universe are low-mass re... |
How could the Yuan field 650.000 men in a 14th century battle ? | Sources from the early modern era and before are generally speaking not reliable when it comes to numbers of troops in a given battle. It is surprisingly difficult to count an army that's large enough that the troops can't be seen all at once. Here are some threads on this general subject:
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
and any detailed scholarly discussion (i.e. not wikipedia, bless it's heart) will have an analysis of the figures presented in sources and not just take them at face value. | [
"According to the Yuanshi, the Yuan fleet set out with an estimated 15,000 Mongol and Chinese soldiers and 1,600–8,000 Korean soldiers in 300 large vessels and 400–500 smaller craft along with several thousand sailors, although figures vary considerably depending on the source and many modern historians consider th... |
what does adrenaline do so that you don't feel the pain , such as from a knife wound or a gunshot? | It's been a while since I've taken endocrinology so someone can correct me if I'm wrong and add what I miss. Adrenaline causes a feedback loop of hormones that do things such as increase your heart rate and your reaction time. It primes you for movement (fight or flight, if you will). I'm sure that the same feedback loop tells your brain to stop processing pain so that you can escape from danger even if you've broken your ankle. | [
"Adrenaline, or other wise known as Epineephrine) is released from the Adrenal medulla. Adrenaline is also released in response to the stimulation of the sympathetic nervous system or stress. Adrenal is known as the \"fight or flight\" hormone as rapidly rushes blood to muscles and brain and produce the effects:\n"... |
Did any of the 17th century European powers take the concept of Sweden forming colonies in North America serious? | The Dutch and Spanish took it seriously.
The Dutch Governor of New Netherlands, Willem Kieft, lodged a formal complaint with the Governor of New Sweden Peter Minuit (then in Swedish service) over the colonisation of what he considered Dutch land. However, as Sweden and the Netherlands were allied against the Habsburgs in Spain and the Holy Roman Empire in the 30 years' war at the time, the Dutch kept a low profile.
However, after the end of the 30 years' war and increasing Swedo-Dutch tension over the Swedish victories over Denmark in Torstensson's War 1645 led to increased tensions between New Netherlands and New Sweden, and 1655, the new Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, gathered 300 soldiers and captured New Sweden 1655. The population of New Sweden was then about 400 Swedes and many natives, to whom the Swedes had excellent relations (they tried to help during the sieges of the Swedish forts, but could not change the outcome).
The Spanish, in the meantime, arrested the survivors of Katten, which sunk outside Puerto Rico 1649 when shipping colonists, weapons and supplies for the colony, acxusing them of an illegal presence in the New World. I suppose they would not have cared if they did not take the Swedish presence in the New World seriously. Most of the survivors died in captivity.
New Sweden was allowed self-governance, both under the Dutch and when New Netherlands was conquered by the English in 1664. Self-rule (with its own church, laws and taxes) was maintained until 1681, when William Penn and the quakers were granted the area. However, about 1 200 people spoke Swedish in 1700, and Sweden continued to send priests and bibles to maintain the Lutheran congreation until 1783. At about the same time Swedish pretty much died out as a language in the area. | [
"Sweden established colonies in the Americas in the mid-17th century, including the colony of New Sweden (1638–1655) on the Delaware River in what is now Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, as well as two possessions in the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries.\n",
"Like many European powers... |
why don't we put probes/satellites to orbit the other planets in solar system ? | We do! Check out [this diagram](_URL_3_) of where all our current probes are. Mars is looking *very* crowded. [Juno](_URL_4_) will arrive at Jupiter in a year and start orbiting. [Cassini](_URL_2_) is currently orbiting Saturn. [Messenger](_URL_0_) was orbiting Mercury until a few months ago. The Japanese [Akatsuki](_URL_1_) spacecraft is vaguely in the vicinity of Venus, but malfunctioned a few years ago when they tried to get it into orbit, so doesn't quite count.
The outer planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (if you count it) are a lot harder to get to, so either you use all your fuel to get there as quickly as possible and don't leave any left to get into orbit (which is the default so far), or you take way too long to get there (20+ years, so we haven't tried), or you try to dodge these issues by using unproven/dangerous/expensive technology (which we also haven't tried so far). | [
"Mercury and Venus are believed to have no satellites chiefly because any hypothetical satellite would have suffered deceleration long ago and crashed into the planets due to the very slow rotation speeds of both planets; in addition, Venus also has retrograde rotation.\n",
"With the exception of Hyperion all the... |
If you were floating in a large body of water that was struck by lightning, how strong would the shock be, depending on proximity? | So if you were in a pool and you knew you were about to get struck, dive underwater? | [
"Other termination shocks can be seen in terrestrial systems; perhaps the easiest may be seen by simply running a water tap into a sink creating a hydraulic jump. Upon hitting the floor of the sink, the flowing water spreads out at a speed that is higher than the local wave speed, forming a disk of shallow, rapidly... |
Will we be able to see a flat surface that is only one atom thick? | Yes.
_URL_0_
That is what a single layer of 1 atom thick graphene looks like. | [
"Atomic dimensions are thousands of times smaller than the wavelengths of light (400–700 nm) so they cannot be viewed using an optical microscope. However, individual atoms can be observed using a scanning tunneling microscope. To visualize the minuteness of the atom, consider that a typical human hair is about 1 m... |
Why can't we just put some dead COVID-19 viruses in a syringe and call it a vaccine? | Viruses aren't really alive in the first place, they're basically a twisted knot of proteins and DNA which has a specific shape that encourages living cells to absorb them, then make more and more until the cell explodes, dumping all the new copies into your body.
Other than this, they don't eat or breathe or respirate or anything, they just hang around like a burr waiting for a passing sock until and unless their proteins denature to the point where they're no longer viable.
The trick with making a vaccine is creating a variant that looks similar enough on the outside that your immune system can learn to recognise the real thing, but either can't actually infect your cells, or causes them to make broken versions that don't work instead of replicating properly - but *without* the altered version doing any *other* nasty stuff by mistake.
Folks would be rightfully livid if they were given a brand new superbug labelled as a vaccine for the current one and pretty jaded if the vaccine didn't work at all, so development has to be done *quite* carefully - which takes time. | [
"Currently, no vaccine exists to prevent infection by all parvoviruses, but recently, the virus's capsid proteins, which are noninfectious molecules, have been suggested acting as antigens for improving of vaccines.\n",
"The current vaccines are very safe. Minor side effects may occur at the site of injection. Th... |
why is comedy less funny the more you watch it? | Comedy is probably best defined as the juxtaposition between the expected and the actual. For example, take the simple joke:
Two men walk into a bar, but neither one ducked.
You expected that "bar" meant "drinking establishment" but it actually meant "metal rod". The difference between what you expected and what was true is the humor.
When you rewatch specials over and over, you are _expecting_ the punchline, so the expected = the actual and we no longer have the core element of humor. | [
"Contrary to common annoyance of canned laughter in television shows, television studios have discovered that they can increase the perceived \"funniness\" of a show by merely playing canned laughter at key \"funny\" moments. They have found that even though viewers find canned laughter highly annoying, they percei... |
why does online video (specifically youtube) get so insanely blurry at lower resolutions? why doesn’t the 240p option output a sharp and pixelated video? | You could always use VLC to watch YouTube. Then you can go:
Tools- > Preferences- > Video- > Show Settings- > All- > Video- > Filters- > Swscale
And choose something like "Nearest Neighbour". I predict that you will quickly decide that this is worse to look at, unless the videos are of low-res video games or similar pixel art. | [
"In the case of most media, such as DVD movies and video games, the video is blurred during the authoring process itself to subdue interline twitter when played back on interlace displays. As a consequence, recovering the sharpness of the original video is impossible when the video is viewed progressively. A user-i... |
How are nuclear arms/weapons safely created and stored to prevent accidents related to arming and detonations? | You can sort of chunk the history of US nuclear weapons safety into a few broad categories:
* 1940s through early 1950s: The early weapons were _very dangerous_ once assembled. They had very few safety protections. They could be set off by lightning, fires, what have you. The main safety precaution was that the nuclear core of the weapon could be removed from the non-nuclear components and stored separately. So the odds of them going off were very low, because they weren't assembled until they were intended to be used. So in a sense these were very dangerous weapons (once assembled!), but very safe the rest of the time.
* 1950s through 1960s: The development of "sealed-pit" weapons made it so that the cores were now permanently part of the weapon. Safety procedures were relatively poor but not terrible — there were "[ready/safe](_URL_1_)" switches that would interrupt the firing signal if it was sent inappropriately. They started adding "environmental sensors" that would making a firing order unlikely to complete if the weapon wasn't under "realistic" war conditions (like falling through the air). They did tests to try and make sure that if one of the conventional explosives did go off, the weapon was "one-point safe" and unlikely to generate a nuclear yield. (Not all weapons designs were, and sometimes engineering "hacks" were used to make them safer. One warhead had a reel of neutron absorbing material inside of its hollow core that could be withdrawn upon use; it turned out that this made the warheads very unlikely to fire correctly and they all had to be fixed.) This was a time of _many_ nuclear accidents, fortunately none of which generated a nuclear yield. But it came close-enough that people started to worry about it very seriously in the late 1950s, and start creating better regulations and engineering guidelines to make them safer.
* 1960s to the present: Continual review of weapon safety, integration of technologies meant to make accidental nuclear use very unlikely, such as using insensitive high-explosives that basically won't detonate unless you set them off in exactly the right way. The integration of Permissive Action Links (PALs), electro-mechanical "locks" on the weapons, so that unauthorized use can't occur. Better creation of "strong" and "weak" links to make it so that under adverse circumstances the weapon won't possibly have a nuclear yield. Etc. I don't want to make it sound like everything from the 1960s onward was super safe — some warheads weren't — but they started taking this very seriously and started taking advantage of safety techniques so that they could be pretty sure that no matter _what_ you did to a nuclear warhead, you wouldn't get a nuclear yield unless you were authorized to get one and were using it under the right circumstances.
For a very readable overview of this history, see Schlosser's _Command and Control_. For a video version, Sandia National Lab's three-part _[Always/Never](_URL_0_)_ does a great job of explaining it, with the engineers and physicists who were involved talking about what they did and what they were afraid of happening. | [
"In addition, land-based ICBM silos can be hardened. No missile launch facility can really defend against a direct nuclear hit, but a sufficiently hardened silo could defend against a near miss, especially if the detonation is not from a multimegaton thermonuclear weapon. In addition, ICBMs can be placed on road or... |
why do sister cellular companies such as simple mobile (t-mobile) exist, isn't that competition to themselves? | They aren't related at all. Companies like Simple Mobile have contracted with other companies, in this case T-Mobile, to sell their own service using the T-Mobile network. Simple mobile is MVNO service and has nothing to do with the actual service of T-Mobile. | [
"Nevertheless, the fundamental principle of GSM and its successors, is open interfaces which encourage competition among multiple vendors. This is the reason a mobile phone is, in fact, a combination of phone and the subscriber identity (SIM). Locking the phone to a network is not much different from having the SIM... |
how does a grandfather clock work? | The weights provide the power to turn the gears that turn the hands on the clock. The pendulum is connected to this mechanism such that the gears/hands can't turn any faster than the pendulum allows. And a pendulum has a time to swing that depends on how long it is and how heavy the weight on it is. So it serves as the basic timekeeping device.
The key bit is the [escapement](_URL_0_). It allows the pendulum to control the turning of a gear. It also feeds a little bit of energy to the pendulum, overcoming whatever it loses through friction. | [
"A grandfather clock (also a longcase clock, tall-case clock, grandfather's clock, or floor clock) is a tall, freestanding, weight-driven pendulum clock with the pendulum held inside the tower or waist of the case. Clocks of this style are commonly 1.8–2.4 metres (6–8 feet) tall. The case often features elaborately... |
Do objects other than black holes emit Hawking radiation? | Hawking radiation is a form of [Unruh radiation](_URL_0_). The ground state of space ("vacuum") looks different for different observer: What you might see as empty space appears to be full of radiation for another accelerating observer.
This effect is thought to occur in various places, namely when you look at a black hole, where a hovering observer is accelerating incredibly fast to stay at a certain height. Another example is the cosmic event horizon, a shell around any observer (currently of radius 5 Gpc) that occurs because of the accelerating expansion of the universe. There's radiation coming from this cosmic horizon too.
In principle you see Unruh radiation even when you accelerate with your car or when just standing on the surface of the earth, but like all other occurrences, it's such a miniscule effect, it's virtually impossible to ever be detected. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Lifetime, Hawking radiation and gamma-rays:\" One way to detect primordial black holes, or to constrain their mass and abundance, is by their Hawking radiation. Stephen Hawking theorized in 1974 that large numbers of such smaller primordial black holes might exist in the Milky Way in our galaxy's hal... |
why do some all-organic, natural healthy etc. fruit juice drinks have 0% vitamin c? | Grapes have very little vitamin C. But I am not aware of any case where the fruit *does* have plenty of vitamin C and then its juice *doesn't.* Can you please provide a link to such a product? | [
"According to US Food and Drug Administration reports, Fruits are known to be rich in nutrients such as Vitamin A, C and Calcium. This is why in addition to its communication as containing No Added Sugar, No Preservative, No Artificial Colours, Chivita 100% Fruit Juice also considers its 100% juice a Nutrient densi... |
do wild animals know if humans are trying to help them (i.e. stuck sheep or trapped bear cubs)? | This is a difficult question to answer. Intelligence and cognitive abilities vary widely from one species to another. Each species' brain is different in terms of size, allocation of functions, etc. so we have to answer this question for each species individually.
What it all comes down to is whether the animal in question possesses a [theory of mind](_URL_1_). This is the ability to attribute mental states to oneself as well as to others. Whether this is present in animals other than humans *at all*, and if so to what degree, is [hotly debated](_URL_0_). Research suggests some primates may have ToM at least to some degree, as well as some parrots and ravens.
Even if an animal did have a theory of mind, that doesn't guarantee it makes the right assumption about your intentions. It might still come to the conclusion that you're going to catch and kill it like a predator would.
So when animals *do* decide to remain calm in such a situation, it's safe to assume they're so desperate or hurt that they've more or less given up already.
As far as pets go, at the vet for example: these animals recognize you as their master and as such are simply obeying you when keeping still.
So, do animals understand our intentions? Most likely: no. | [
"Wildlife rescue groups, unlike many other animal rescue organizations, focus on the rehabilitation and care of wild animals saved from illegal breeders, roadside circuses, and many other abusive situations. They do not seek to find adoptive homes for the animals, but rather to reintroduce the animals to lifestyles... |
realism (international relations) & the cold war | Ok back to my old IR days, see if I can break this down..
Realism -
The world is in anarchy, shit is fucked! I don't trust you, you don't trust me, we both certainly don't trust that weird looking dude over there. We basically don't have any rules because even if we did we certainly don't trust each other enough to follow them. The world is like a school yard and all the teachers are dead.
Now how the fuck do we maintain order in this world of anarchy? Well we need power don't we. I don't want you to sucker punch me, and you don't want me to sucker punch you because if we start sucker punching each other there aint no teachers to come in and break this shit up! So what I do is start hitting the gym right, beef up, start lifting and building this muscle. Because If I am stronger than you, you aint going to try and fight me right? No you would have to be fucking crazy! But you on the other hand see me beefing up right, and you start thinking to yourself 'fuck this guy is getting strong, he can literally walk over here and kick my fucking ass, I better hit the gym to so I can hold my own in case shit hits the fan.' Ok this is called a **security dilema** We are both hitting the gym because we are fucking scared of each other and what we may do to each other so we are doing what we can to power up.
Now what about the other kids on the play ground? They see us beefing up and they get a little scared too. But they might be a little yonger, they might not have access to good gyms for what ever reason, they don't want to beef up but they also don't want to be left alone on the playground because anything might happen to them. So these little punks start thinking about ways to befriend you or I so they get that little bit of security. This is called **band wagoning** We are essentially building alliances because, hey you might have bigger pecs than me, but me combined with this little dude over here might just be enough to take you on.
Ok now let's take this analogy and see if it makes sense in light of the cold war. There is no all powerful government (teachers) who controls what the world does, we have the newly formed UN but they don't really have an army and can't really do shit. World war 2 has just finished and the world is fairly unsettled and we have the United States (me) and the USSR (you) and we are assessing what the world (playground) is going to turn into. Now The US is a little insecure as they think the USSR might come and sucker punch them (Engage in warfare) so they start building up their military (hitting the gym). Now the USSR are like holly shit balls, the US are stocking up their military, we best do the same because no one else is going to come help us if they come over here and kick the shit out of us, so they start building up their military. Now we have that security dilema we were talking about, one states increased security measures cause another states insecurity which then makes them increase their security but indoing so decreases he security of the first state, in essence one big fucking circle jerk.
Ok so now we have the US and USSR building their military making more nukes and the other countries are all getting anxious so they start looking to bandwagon with either the US or USSR. So we essentially get NATO and the USSR gets the eastern bloc, China (for a little while) and several other states around asia and what not.
I am getting tired now, so I will pretty much just leave it here. This is a brief eli5 rundown on the cold war. Hope it helps.
If you want to go into further detail like neo-realism, I encourage you to read the text book. Essentially neo-realism was created to explain the collapse of the USSR because classical realism couldn't.
You best upvote this, it took me like 10 minutes. | [
"There are several different international relations theory schools. Supporters of realism in international relations argue that the motivation of states is the quest for security, and conflicts can arise from the inability to distinguish defense from offense, which is called the security dilemma.\n",
"Post-reali... |
Help with U.S. Army WWII history? Investigating a family member's last letter. | At the Top of your great-uncle's letter his return address is "Co. B 10th Inf" which means B company of the 10th Infantry regiment.
Here is the wikipedia entry for the 10th Infantry regiment.
_URL_1_
According to that wikipedia (Mods forgive me!) entry, your Great Uncle's unit was the 5th Infantry division. Here is their wikipedia entry _URL_0_
I'm going to pull a few of the relevant volumes of the US Army Historical Series off the shelf and respond to this comment later with a bit more details about that unit's actions in August and September 1944. Maybe there is a detailed regimental history for the 10th online as well. | [
"Memorial: Letters from American Soldiers is a 1991 American short documentary film directed by Bill Couturié. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. It shows footage from World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War, overlaid with readings of letters from U... |
why are subtitles sometimes out of sync and progressively get worse? | Its playing slightly slower than the movie, so the problem accumulates. When you pause, it resets because subtitles are usually linked to specific times in a movie.
A decent free media player (like gomplayer, my go to) will usually allow you to speed them up a bit | [
"In the audiovisual system, even when more than one language was used, subtitles maintained their position unchanged for many years. The newest software technologies for mobile devices, which came out as an alternative to subtitling in cinemas, or the possibilities opened up by head-mounted displays, such as subtit... |
how true knowledge of future events have a bearing on the current ones? | [Here's Martin Gardner's kid-friendly introduction to time travel and the paradoxes it creates.](_URL_0_)
Start on the linked pages, and read through the following pages to an appropriate level for your six year old. | [
"1) \"History cannot always accurately predict the future.\" Using relations derived from historical data to predict the future implicitly assumes there are certain lasting conditions or constants in a complex system. This almost always leads to some imprecision when the system involves people.\n",
"Theories of h... |
probably a dumb question but here goes. if someone has lice why exactly can't they just dip their head in water and drown the lice? | Lice can survive a long time underwater, about 14 hours. I would imagine that their eggs would survive and repopulate as well. So perhaps you could drown them, but you'd have to drown yourself first. | [
"LIS does, however, have a number of potential side effects including problems with incision site healing and incontinence to flatus and faeces (some surveys of surgical results suggest incontinence rates of up to 36%).\n",
"Head lice are spread through direct head-to-head contact with an infested person. From ea... |
In 1950 do you think the people at the top of the USSR really believed in communism (or believed they believed) and thought their actions were somehow good for it, or do you think they were just in it for the power? | Just a quick modnote.
This question is worded to ask "do you believe..."
If you choose to answer this question, please be prepared to reference documents that demonstrate what senior Soviet leadership thought. Please *do not* justify your answers with "well, this is what I believe, anyway". | [
"The Soviet achievement in the 1930s seemed hugely impressive from the outside, and convinced many people, not necessarily Communists or even socialists, of the virtues of state planning and authoritarian models of social development. This was later to have important consequences in countries like China, India and ... |
if there were bacteria on mars, why wouldn't it be everywhere like on earth? | Mars lacks a functional magnetosphere to protect the planet's surface from the Sun's radiation, and the atmosphere is incredibly thin and diminishing more every day. As a result there are very few locations on Mars where bacterial life could live for a prolonged period of time.
To put this in perspective, even after a full-scale nuclear war or the worst-case scenario of climate change, Earth would still be preferable to Mars for most forms of life. Mars is an incredibly hostile environment. | [
"There are also studies in the field of astrobiology regarding the possibility of \"Halobacterium\" on Mars. Similarly to the Dead Sea, any water located on the Martian surface would be a brine with an extremely high salt concentration. Therefore, microbial life on Mars would require adaptations similar to those of... |
If I were to release oxygen into the vacuum of space where would it go? | For small amounts, it would just disperse. If you have HUGE amounts of it (like the size of a large planet), it will have enough mass to clump together. However, things like solar winds will also play a role in dispersing it. | [
"An additional source of atmospheric free oxygen comes from photolysis, whereby high-energy ultraviolet radiation breaks down atmospheric water and nitrous oxide into component atoms. The free H and escape into space, leaving O in the atmosphere: \n",
"Oxygen generators on board the International Space Station pr... |
Could we have wifi in the visible spectrum of light? | Yes, we already have this. It's called [free-space optical communications](_URL_0_). In the simplest example, if you stand on one mountain at night and your friend stands another mountain away from obstructions, you could communicate with your friend by pointing your flashlight at him and turning it on and off according to Morse code patterns. While simple, this method is very low bandwidth. Modern optical communications use electrically-modulated laser beams instead.
You are right that obstructions (trees, ground, people, dust, rain, clouds) make free space optical communications impractical in many settings. | [
"There is wireless network that for data transmission uses visible light, and does not use intensity modulation of optical sources. The idea is to use vibration generator instead of optical sources for data transmission.\n",
"Various sources define visible light as narrowly as 420–680 nm to as broadly as 380–800 ... |
What happens to the cash/gold reserves of occupied countries in WW2? | I base part of this answer on [an earlier one on German pre-war and war spending here](_URL_2_).
Most countries had a cold reserve, a reserve of hard currency and other items and would store it at a central bank. They often also had assets at foreign banks, especially if they had a lot of trade with those countries. Several countries moved a lot of their gold to British or US banks before the war for safekeeping and trade - some managed to evacuate it under adventerous circumstances. For example, Norway had labourers carry the gold to sleds to transport it to a hastily mobilised fleet of trucks, which sped north pursued by German paratroopers. The Royal Guard had to make a stand to fend of the paratroopers and protect the gold, the government, the parliament and the king.
The nazis burned through the German gold and currency reserve and all assets seized from Jews and other 'undesirables' and defaulted on all foreign loans in 1939. During 1936, the German gold reserve fell from $33 133 000 to $26 707 000, despite all schemes (MEFO bills) and siezed assets. The nazis printed a lot of money and pegged it to gold in theory, but refused to exchange it for gold, which meant that their *reichsmark* was only accepted in Germany - they had to pay for all their imports in gold, hard currency (usually British pounds or US dollars) or industrial products.
The Germans seized the Austrian gold reserve in March 1938, yet at the end of 1938, Hjalmar Schacht reported to Hitler that all currency and gold reserves had been exhausted, that 6 billion MEFO bills could not be honoured by the government and that re-armament would have to be cut by 20-30%, or Germany was bankrupt. Hitler, not satisfied with this, promptly sacked Schacht in Januari 1939.
The Czechoslovak gold reserve was siezed in 1939, and parts were delivered to the nazis from the Bank of England, where the Czechoslovaks had sent it for safekeeping and trade, in April-September 1939. The nazis also took over the Free State of Danzig's gold reserve in September 1939, and plundered sizable amounts of gold from the central banks of Belgium and Netherlands.
The Germans set the exchange rate of the *reichsmark* at about three times as high towards the French Franc as it had been 1930 and thus plundered the French economy (German soldiers and companies were amazed at what prices the German occupation forced the French traders and merchants to sell them French goods) systematically. They did the same in Belgium and the Netherlands.
To total things, stolen gold (all numbers are in 1938 US gold dollars, 35 dollars per troy ounce):
* Austria and Czechoslovakia: $146 000 000 in gold.
* Free State of Danzig: $4 000 000 in gold.
* Poland: The gold was evacuated through Romania, Turkey and Lebanon to France and then to French West Africa and then to the USA.
* Denmark: Had almost all their gold in Britain and USA.
* Norway: Managed to evacuate their gold to Britain.
* The Netherlands: $163 000 000 in gold.
* Belgium: $269 000 000 in gold. This gold was, like the Polish evacuated to Dakar, but were delivered to Germany 1940-42.
* Luxembourg: $4 857 832 in gold, evacuated to France and taken in the port of Marseilles, awaiting transport.
* Yugoslavia: $69 000 000 in gold.
* Greece: $28 000 000 in gold (it is hard to confirm that this really was seized by the Germans, but some sources indicate it).
In addition to this, Germany took over the administration of the gold reserves of Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, a total of $200 000 000, of which none of those countries ever saw any of again.
In addition, the occupied countries were forced to pay for their own occupation in manufactured goods and other assets, a total of $33 735 000 were siezed this way.
Sources:
_URL_1_
_URL_0_ | [
"Prior to the Polish Defensive War of 1939 against Third Reich and Soviet Union, all of the gold reserves (105,000 kg) were evacuated from Poland to the Banque de France (Paris) and then most of it to Canada and London. The Bank continued its functioning in exile, as the central bank of the Polish Government in Exi... |
Is it possible to produce viable offspring from two very different dog breeds? | Yes, it happens all the time. I've seen puppies from a (male) dachshund and (female) St. Bernard before. Keep in mind that all dogs, regardless of breed, are still *canis lupus familiaris*, and as such, can produce offspring with each other. | [
"Dog crossbreeds (first generation crosses from two purebred dogs, also called dog hybrids) are not breeds and are not considered purebred, although crossbreds from the same two breeds of purebreds can have \"identical qualities\", similar to what would be expected from breeding two purebreds, but with more genetic... |
if a child loses a limb, and it's successfully reattached, can the limb still grow? | It depends on how clean the separation is, how the limb was preserved (cooled) and how skilled the surgeon is. It will never stop growing. If it is attached successfully and is still alive then it will continue to heal and grow as usual. And it does not matter if it is kids or adults. Sharks do tend to tear the limb off instead of a clean cut and they tend to go for larger limbs and even swallows pieces of it. So it is very rare to get a good enough limb to reattach after a shark attack. | [
"If extensive necrosis and gangrene has set in an arm or leg, the limb may have to be amputated. Limb amputation is in itself usually remarkably well tolerated, but is associated with a substantial mortality (~50%), primarily because of the severity of the diseases in patients where it is indicated.\n",
"People w... |
Does copper IUD stop implantation of a fertilized egg? | The copper in the IUD serves as an pro-inflammatory agent. The inflammation prevents proper proliferation and physiologic functioning of the endometrium, which is required for the implantation of the fertilized egg. The fertilized egg therefore rolls around and without endometrium to implant and obtain nutrients, eventually dies--this is the abortifacient hypothesis of the IUD's mechanism of action.
More importantly, however, is that the inflammation disrupts effective passage of BOTH the sperm and the egg after follicular rupture, as well as being spermicidal, so it's extremely unlikely any fertilization even happens if you are able to insert the IUD pre-fertilization. This is universally accepted as the MoA for Copper IUDs as both regular and emergency contraceptives.
1. _URL_0_
2. Speroff, Leon; Darney, Philip D. (2011). "Intrauterine contraception". A clinical guide for contraception (5th ed.). Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. pp. 239–280. ISBN 978-1-60831-610-6. p. 246 | [
"The primary mechanism of action of copper-releasing intrauterine devices (IUDs) as emergency contraceptives is to prevent fertilization because of copper toxicity to sperm and ova. The very high effectiveness of copper-releasing IUDs as emergency contraceptives implies that they must also prevent some pregnancies ... |
Just how aggressive are wasps? | Regular paper wasps aren't really that aggressive. Don't bother their nest and they won't bother you. Africanized bees and hornets are much more aggressive. | [
"The posture of wasps is very telling of which is dominant or subordinate. The dominant wasp generally sits higher than the subordinate, whereas the subordinates have a lower stance. For wasps of equal rank, it is not uncommon for them to continuously try to rise higher and begin to aggressively fight each other un... |
Is friction a point force or distributed force? | Can you go into more detail on why you would ask this? In theory friction is the result of tiny defects in surfaces gripping each other, so it is a distribution of point forces. However, it is even enough that we can model it as a point force if we want for statics purposes. | [
"Friction is a surface force that opposes relative motion. The frictional force is directly related to the normal force that acts to keep two solid objects separated at the point of contact. There are two broad classifications of frictional forces: static friction and kinetic friction.\n",
"The Coulomb friction f... |
why are some businesses classified as "non-profit," but are clearly wildly profitable based on their executive's salaries? | A business has ownership, whether it be a sole proprietor, dual proprietors, private shareholders. or public shareholders, someone is there to collect the profit as the owner of the company. Non profit organizations don't have someone to collect profits, instead the profits are invested back into the company. They do have a Board of Directors that might make decisions for the organization, but they can't take the profit home with them. | [
"While an executive may be any corporate \"officer\"—including president, vice president, or other upper-level manager—in any company, the source of most comment and controversy is the pay of chief executive officers (CEOs) (and to a lesser extent the other top five highest-paid executives) of large publicly traded... |
How has the baptist denomination evolved within the United States from the beginning of independence to the present? | I'm on my phone atm, so can't give a comprehensive reply, but I'll give the short answer now.
Baptism then still considered itself an outsider branch of Christianity. The ostracism that Baptists faced in the UK was still very much present in their minds. For example, Baptists were practically barred from holding political office in the UK.
What changed is Baptists shifted from being a conscious minority to a conscious majority.
Gtg, will elaborate later.
EDIT: Ok, back on my PC.
First thing: Baptists are a very decentralised group, and quite diverse. Even an organisation such as the [Southern Baptist Convention](_URL_1_) has members who have very different understandings of soteriology (ie, the theory of how Christians are saved). Further, it is very difficult to say that Baptists believe this or that, as almost the only common factor amongst people who call themselves Baptists is a belief in only baptizing adults, and I guess the trinity. On pretty much every other issue you will find Baptists taking both sides.
Second thing: Baptists come from a tradition of outsidership. They split from the Church of England in the 17th century, usually at great personal cost. Indeed, many Baptists emigrated to the Colonies explicitly because of the persecution they were copping in the United Kingdom. Even in America though they were (initially) a minority group, often suffering soft or informal persecution at the hands of wealthy Anglican/Episcopalian settlers. As such, pushing for religious freedom was generally very important to them.
Anyway, on to the change. Despite their apolitical origins (by and large Baptists just wanted the government to leave them be), American Baptists couldn't stay out of it for long. Because of their large and growing membership, issues like the American Revolution and slavery had to be addressed.
As such, the churches became more offensive rather than defensive in their tactics. You can see the evolution in the Resolutions passed by the Annual SBC on the topic of [Religious Liberty](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/AMResSearchAction.asp?SortYearBy=DESC & DisplayRows=20 & Submit=Sort+Again & frmdata=rlgslbrty & SearchBy=Subject). If you have the time you can read each one yourself (they aren't very long and there's only like 40 or so. (Again, it's important to stress here that the SBC doesn't represent all Baptists, but nothing does, and as the SBC are the largest and they kindly put all their resolutions online since the 1800s, this will do).
So we can see [this](_URL_0_) resolution in 1866 says:
> 4. That in adoption these resolutions, the Convention expressly disavow any disposition to interfere with political affairs, and have regard solely to the question of religious liberty.
Then in [1898](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=908) you see this:
> RESOLVED, That this Convention respectfully requests the President of the United States and others in authority, that in the adjustment of the political affairs in the island of Cuba, they use every proper endeavor to secure equality of religious right to every inhabitant of that island.
Basically they are saying that they have no interest in politics apart from religious liberty.
Even in [1913](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=909) you had this interesting resolution:
> WHEREAS, The complete separation of church and State has ever been, and is now, a fundamental principle of Baptist belief and practice; and
> WHEREAS, In many places there are efforts being made to divert State and city municipal funds to the maintenance of certain religious schools, and other institutions: be it
> RESOLVED, That the Southern Baptist Convention reaffirms its unalterable belief in the absolute separation of church and State and hereby expresses its sympathy with all who are having to fight efforts of any who would try to violate the holy principle of the absolute separation of church and State.
Then you start to see some resolutions that are wary of Roman Catholics asserting power. Won't quote them, but an example is [here](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=910). In short, the SBC really didn't like the idea the US appointing an ambassador to the Vatican.
This one in [1919](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=914) is interesting because it marks a shift. In calling for President Wilson to advocate for the needs of persecuted Jews in Europe they are not just asking for the government to leave people alone, they are asking the government in intervene. It might not seem like such a big change, but there it is. This approach would continue will calls for government intervention to help Armenian Christians and Baptists in eastern europe among others.
In general it shows that the SBC and members perhaps started to think of the United States Government not as a beast that needed to be feared, respected & kept chained as tightly as possible, but a potential tool for good. This is really significant.
In the 1930's you started to see the US government involve itself in the lives of citizens more than it had in the past. This [1935](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=922) resolution warning members against using Government grants to carry out their works is telling. In days past this wouldn't have been either an option or needed to be said. The sentiment was [repeated ](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=924) [throughout](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=926) the decade and into the [50's](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=933).
Then you have this resolution in [1959](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=935). It's quite short, but to me reads as if the convention finally admitted it could not stop the tides. Baptists could no longer hold themselves completely separate from the state, and this is where it really starts. A few more resolutions through the 60's just build on that. As an aside, some baptists still attempt to hold themselves completely separate. I know of a family in my state of Tasmania (Australia) that rejects any form of government assistance at all (including healthcare). The mother is in a wheelchair, and suffers considerably, but they will not accept help. Anyway.
Moving on to the 70's, we see this para in the tail-end of a resolution in [1977](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=951):
> Be it therefore RESOLVED, That we reaffirm our belief in the free exercise of religion as determined by a free conscience, and that we oppose any discrimination, legal or otherwise, against any individual based upon race, age, gender, or nationality, and that in reaffirming our opposition to such discrimination, we also express our opposition to all governmental efforts to define discrimination in such a way that ridiculous extremes, repugnant to the Christian faith and life, become the law of the land, such as the legalization of homosexual marriages, permitting homosexual couples to adopt children, prohibiting father-son banquets or single-sex choirs, requiring sexually integrated housing and restroom facilities, requiring governmentally financed housing to be made available to persons living in adultery or fornication, prohibiting a draft law that applies to men only, and we urge all citizens to be active in opposing the adoption of such public policies.
From the 1980's on, you see a shift to a very recognizable politically conservative position, which hasn't changed a great deal. For example, this [1984](http://_URL_1_/resolutions/amResolution.asp?ID=554) resolution condemns the banning of voluntary prayer in public schools. *as an aside, really? You aren't allowed to pray at all in public schools in America? That doesn't sound right.*
Anyway, you can read the resolutions yourself, and get the idea.
**TLDR** The baptist movement got bigger, and government involved itself with the day-to-day lives of Americans a lot more. Hence, Baptists felt that as government involved itself in their business, they were justified in involving themselves in the government's business. | [
"The Triennial Convention (so-called because it met every three years) was the first national Baptist denomination in the United States. Officially named the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions, it was formed in 1814 to advance missionary wo... |
how does the internet exist? no i'm not talking about us using it but more so, what's actually causing it to run and who's in charge, who could possibly end it? | The Internet is what we call a global data network consisting of many sub networks belonging to various companies and governments.
It's kind of like asking who owns the road? What road? The world is connected with roads, some going from one country to another, and in many cases many countries. They connect places and people, and allow us to visit businesses and others. The way you know where to go is by looking up the address of a location (DNS, see \[1\]) and then checking a map to know how you get there (routing tables, see \[2\]).
Addresses are also governed by an entity which hands them out, and once they've been handed out, have an easier time being subdivided to other companies and institutions, or even individuals.
The important part left is then who creates the map (see \[3\]) because this changes constantly and determines the path we take to reach our destination.
& #x200B;
\[1\] For example when you type in an address in your browser, your computer sends a DNS request to the DNS server that it has stored in its settings, which responds to your computer with an IP address, and your computer then can send data directly to that IP address. The DNS network however does have some governance in the sense that there are root servers at the very top level, but there is no requirement for the requests to reach them as they can be manipulated by a DNS server at any point in the chain, although in most public cases isn't needed or done.
\[2\] Mostly in this case we talk about globally routed addresses. For example, your computer needs to really only know where to, within its own network, send data if it's outside its own network, it doesn't need to know anything more than that. This local destination is called your gateway and in most residential setups is handled by your router. So your computer wants to reach an address on the Internet using a domain (something dot something), gets an IP from the DNS server, sees that the IP (say 216.58.211.142) is not within your own network (say 192.168.0.0/24) so it sends the data to its gateway (say 192.168.0.1, which in this example is your router). Your gateway has a routing table just like that ("This is my local network, anything outside of it, send here \[another IP address\]", called a default route). As you go higher up the chain from your home, into your ISPs network, and then beyond, the routing table will increase until we find a routing table that describes where we can find the location of the IP address you are looking for, and then start to decrease as the packets hit those routers since we are getting closer to the target the devices hit need to know fewer and fewer routes.
\[3\] Throughout the Internet are the above mentioned routers. They belong to companies, institutions, governments, and some individuals. The point is, these routers communicate with each other. They most often on the Internet use a protocol called BGP. In this protocol we determine with whom we'd like to talk, and what we'd like to say. The things the routers exchange during these talks between themselves are routes, so that each router knows what the router it is connected to is itself connected to. This is why the higher up we get, the routing table grows, so that we at the highest point know where to send data no matter what the address is (I am router A, and I want to send data to IP X, looking at my routing table the router that knows where that address is goes via router B, so I'll send my data there and then it is router B's problem).
& #x200B;
Put very simply and omitting quite a bit, this collection of roads, addresses, and maps is what we call the Internet. There isn't a single point one can attack bring it all down, and there isn't one entity controlling everything, but if someone was dedicated and had the resources, they could disrupt parts of the Internet for a finite time.
& #x200B;
I apologise if parts of the above seemed rushed, I'm finishing this with 2% battery left. I'll check comments later if I've left anything unclear.
& #x200B;
Edit: I tried to simplify the basic idea, but for the folks wondering what 5 year old would understand this, ELI5 isn't for actual 5-year-olds (rule #4). | [
"BULLET::::- Internet – The internet arose because of extensive research on ARPANET between various university, corporations, and ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency), an agency of the Department of Defense. Scientist theorized a network of computers connected to each other. Computing capabilities contributed to... |
why is it that every time i am in a customer phone support menu that asks for my (acct., citation,order, etc.) # the first thing i have to do when the rep comes online is give them that exact same info. why ask for it if it doesn't show up? | Sometimes it's as dumb as you suggest, but most of the time it's a form of two-factor authentication. The system asks for your account number, and then the rep on the other hand has that account open. Then the rep will ask for the account number again, to make sure they're looking at the right account, as well as asking your order number, last four, DOB, etc to authenticate that you're really the account holder. | [
"Users have the option of ordering from the website or from a Seamless mobile app for Android, BlackBerry, or iOS. Users enter their address, and Seamless returns a list of restaurants that will deliver to the submitted address. Users then select a restaurant, create an order from the online menu, and submit the or... |
why is my facial hair darker than my head hair? | Im a blonde and my beard grows in a nice deep red..just genetics | [
"Pubic hair and underarm hair can vary in color considerably from the hair of the scalp. In most people, it is darker, although it can also be lighter. In most cases it is most similar in color to a person's eyebrows.\n",
"Malnutrition is also known to cause hair to become lighter, thinner, and more brittle. Dark... |
Couldn't the cure for cancer be no cure at all? | The problem is that cancer typically strikes late in life.
If something happens post-reproduction then it's invisible to selection. What that means is that selection acts on differential reproductive success and by the time you've reproduced it's acting on the genes you've passed on to your offspring; which means that post-reproduction, selection is done acting on your generation and it can never see a probabilistic event like cancer that happens after reproduction. If you have a hundred kids and then get cancer selection sees you as very fit! Your kids will also have a greater likelihood of contracting cancer, but they'll also have a greater likelihood of having 100 kids each before they do.
So cancer will never be eliminated by selection, because selection can't see it.
(Edit: Wording.) | [
"it is unlikely that there will ever be a single \"cure for cancer\" any more than there will be a single treatment for all infectious diseases. Angiogenesis inhibitors were once thought to have potential as a \"silver bullet\" treatment applicable to many types of cancer, but this has not been the case in practice... |
Why does caffeine cause jitteriness in some people? From what I understand, caffeine doesn't "wake you up", it just affects the binding of adenosine thereby -Preventing- sleepiness. | Caffeine does both effects, a quick google search has all the answers.
From the top google result we have....
_URL_0_
> So, How Does Caffeine Affect Adenosine and Sleepiness?
> Caffeine belongs to the xanthine chemical group. Adenosine is a xanthine that is naturally occurring in the brain, used as a neurotransmitter at some synapses. Because of their relation, caffeine looks a lot like adenosine to nerve cells and therefore binds to adenosine receptors in the basal forebrain. The cells then can no longer sense adenosine because caffeine is taking up the receptors. Instead of slowing down, the nerve cells speed up and stop the person from getting tired.
> What Else Does Caffeine Affect in the Brain?
> As a result of the blocked adenosine, there is increased neuron firing in the brain, which causes the pituitary gland to think that there is some sort of emergency. It then releases hormones telling the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline. This has many effects on the body– liver releases sugar into the blood for extra energy, pupils dilate, heart beat increases, breathing tube open more, etc. Caffeine is also said to increase dopamine levels much like amphetamines do, which produces a euphoric effect. It potentially does this by slowing the rate of dopamine re-uptake.
tl;dr caffeine blocks sleepiness and causes a feedback loop of adrenaline production | [
"Caffeine's mechanism of action differs from many stimulants, as it produces stimulant effects by inhibiting adenosine receptors. Adenosine receptors are thought to be a large driver of drowsiness and sleep, and their action increases with extended wakefulness. Caffeine has been found to increase striatal dopamine ... |
this is a delicate subject so i’ll start with this is not intended to hurt feelings or be disrespectful. why if you say something against a person solely based on ethnicity is it called racism, unless that person is jewish, what exactly does anti-semitic mean? | The TL:DR is that Judaism has roots in a religious movement, as opposed to a purely race concept so it’s a clearer label to make everyone aware of exactly who you’re trying to insult.
That’s a very short wrap up, but make no mistake. Being anti Semitic, is racist. It’s just that a white man doesn’t automatically belong to any preconceived group, so this is merely a subsection of racism, to create further subdivision among people.
Anti semitism is the discrimination of Jews for their heritage, but it is also racist. If you were to be anti Semitic, someone would not be wrong for calling you a racist. | [
"Racial antisemitism is prejudice against Jews based on a belief or assertion that Jews constitute a distinct racial or ethnic group that has inherent traits or characteristics that are in some way abhorrent or inherently inferior or otherwise different to that of the rest of society. The abhorrence may be expresse... |
Why can I see the "shadow" of a gas from a ground vent, but I can't see anything in the air? | Not bouncing, no. The light is being refracted (not to be confused with reflected) as it changes from one medium to another, though some amount may be absorbed. The same effect can be seen if you put part of a pencil in a glass of water. The pencil appears bent at the water line, but it is not the pencil bending, but the light as it moves from the air into the water, bounces off the pencil, then bending again as it moves from the water back to the air, before finally being absorbed by your eye. | [
"In principle, we cannot directly see a difference in temperature, a different gas, or a shock wave in the transparent air. However, all these disturbances refract light rays, so they can cast shadows. The plume of hot air rising from a fire, for example, can be seen by way of its shadow cast upon a nearby surface ... |
why can foods be too salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and spicy, but not too savory? | Go get a big ol' chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Not crappy pre-grated 70% cellulose parmesan, the real stuff.
Now grate a cup or two of that.
Now eat it all at once. Just shove as much of it in your mouth at once as you can and chew on it.
Then tell me if you still think things can't be "too umami". | [
"Sour and salt tastes can be pleasant in small quantities, but in larger quantities become more and more unpleasant to taste. For sour taste this is presumably because the sour taste can signal under-ripe fruit, rotten meat, and other spoiled foods, which can be dangerous to the body because of bacteria which grow ... |
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