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why are maps that way round? | Because the original explorers were Western Europeans, and we've just used modified revisions of their maps since everyone has been used to them. Defining North as the "top" of anything is a human attribution, and we could easily make the South the "top" of the world.
[Here](_URL_1_) is a video from the tv show The West Wing on the subject (it's short, but interesting).
And [here](_URL_0_) is a wiki article on reversed maps. | [
"A good example of this is the surface of the Earth. While maps frequently portray north, south, east and west as a simple square grid, that is not in fact the case. Instead, the longitude lines running north and south are curved and meet at the north pole. This is because the Earth is not flat, but instead round.\... |
I know that a calorie is the energy needed to raise 1 gram of water through 1 degree Celsius, but what is the actual process used to determine what calorie value to put on a nutrition label? | Typically speaking, nutrition labels are calculated by using reference materials rather than direct analysis.
As for the reference values, those are determined by bomb calorimetry, which is exactly what you've surmised. A dehydrated sample is placed in a sealed container, the container is flooded with oxygen (to ensure complete combustion), placed in a water bath, and ignited electrically. The temperature change in the water bath is measured to provide a caloric value. | [
"The calorie equals the amount of thermal energy necessary to raise the temperature of one gram of water by 1 Celsius degree, from a temperature of 14.5 degrees Celsius, at a pressure of 1 atm. For thermochemistry a calorie of 4.184 J is used, but other calories have also been defined, such as the International Ste... |
Why is it that the American colonies with the highest Puritan populations are now the least religious and most liberal states in the country? | I’ll add another wrinkle to your question: how is that the *least* religious colonies of the 18th century – those of the South, where church attendance was markedly lower than in New England or the Middle Colonies – have now become the Bible Belt of the US?
One answer has been provided by Christine Leigh Heyrman in her book, *The Southern Cross*. Heyrman argues that evangelical churches struggled in the 18th century to gain inroads in the South, in large part because their religious message challenged the social hierarchy of the region: they preached racial equality (and even opposed slavery), emphasized religious bonds over familial bonds (which threatened the power of plantation patriarchs), and encouraged the participation of women (which did the same).
In the 19th century, though, these evangelical churches repackaged their message. They toned down their criticism of slavery, promoted a muscular version of Christianity that appealed to men, restricted the participation of women and African-Americans in church affairs, and emphasized public religious behavior – while reassuring men that they still ruled the private sphere. With this style of religion reinforcing the social order – rather than challenging it – evangelical churches grew by leaps and bounds in the South, ultimately turning it into the Bible Belt of the country by the 20th century.
Which returns us to your original question. I would challenge the notion that the Puritans were “pretty far right” on the political spectrum. At the core of the mission of Massachusetts was the notion that all colonists were “knit together in this work as one man” – meaning that they had a strong sense of mutual responsibility, which would probably be construed as socialist in modern terms (if we’re going to indulge in anachronism). Everyone was expected to look after their neighbors, and there was a strong sense of mutual responsibility.
By contrast, the Southern colonies had a more individualistic, live-and-let-live ethos. Every plantation owner was the king of his own castle, and there was relatively little support for state intrusion in family affairs. (See Mary Beth Norton’s *Founding Mothers and Fathers* on this point.) In the 18th and 19th centuries, the South had lower tax rates than New England, no support for public schools (which were strongly supported in the Northeast), and little support for investments in infrastructure. (A lot of this had to do with slavery – see Robin Einhorn’s *American Taxation, American Slavery*.) The style of religion that took hold in the South in the 19th century reflected this outlook, which helps to explain why this region still tends to lean right even today.
| [
"The Puritans created a deeply religious, socially tight-knit, and politically innovative culture that still influences the United States. They fled England and attempted to create a \"nation of saints\" or a \"City upon a Hill\" in America, a community designed to be an example for all of Europe.\n",
"That the N... |
Did Germans citizens who peacefully opposed Hitler get punished in any way? What would happen if a soldier didn't want to kill Jews? | German citizens who peaceably opposed Hitler could still be punished, and indeed executed. The [White Rose](_URL_4_) is the most famous example. People who did so more privately could still be punished if the state found out.
Most Jews were killed by special units, not just by everyday soldiers. Early in the in Final Solution, Jews were shot by members of [Einsatzgruppen](_URL_1_) and [Ordnungspolizei](_URL_2_); later by, [local auxiliaries](_URL_3_) (Lithuanians, Ukrainians, etc.) who were often massively drunk. About half of all Jews who died in the Holocaust died by bullets, rather than in the camps. This was both inefficient and difficult for the men, as well as instantly destroying a major source of labor, which led eventually to the camps being built. Once the camps were built, they were staffed by SS-men. Famously, no one has ever found a record of a Nazi soldier being punished for not killing a Jew.
I know less about the SS-men at the camps, but we know a lot about the operations of *Ordnungspolizei* because of Christopher Browning's excellent *Ordinary Men*. It's one of the most important works of social history in the past fifty years. He found the testimony of this [one unit of the police](_URL_0_) that was staffed by "ordinary men"--middle aged, mostly middle class guys who had been police in Hamburg before the War. In their first "operation" that involved shooting Jews at point blank range, the commander explicitly gave people the option of opting out, which 12 out of 500 did without ill consequence (he never explicitly gave them the option again). Over the course of the seventeen hours of killing, several others also asked to be relieved and were. No one was disciplined for it. However, over the course of later "actions", fewer people opted out, in part because they knew it was unpleasant work for almost everyone, and they knew if they opted out, it would mean more work for their comrades in arms. A few managed to secure transfer to other units (if I recall correctly, everyone who asked, but only those with a certain amount of authority asked).
But for the most part, people who openly opposed Hitler got severely punished, but those who sought to opt out of killing Jews were not punished and (generally) allowed to opt out. If you have any interest in the later, I strongly recommend Browning's book. It's written and clearly intended for both an academic and popular audience. It's chilling, but I also couldn't put it down. | [
"While Allied servicemen were ordered to obey local laws while in Germany, soldiers could not be prosecuted by German courts for crimes committed against German citizens except as authorised by the occupation authorities. Invariably, when a soldier was accused of criminal behaviour the occupation authorities prefer... |
What did America do after the dust bowl | Agricultural practices changed in part by necessity. I can only speak to my experiences growing up on a wheat farm in Kansas with the generation that survived still around to tell us about it.
The weather in the 1920's had some impact on what happened later in the 1930's. In the 1920s there was a good amount of rain and the farms were booming to the point that they were able to farm parcels of land that during normal cycles would be difficult at best. Often after harvest the preparation for next years crops involved plowing the stubble. This churning of the topsoil was seen as a need practice to help control weeds and to increase the speed of the breakdown of the organic material that would feed next years crops. The downside of this is the exposure/loss of the moisture trapped in the soil. Additionally there was a heavy push for growing cash crops (wheat primarily in the area I grew up in) and the incentive to rotate crops or fallow (a season without crops) fields was a good deal lower. So the topsoil started to lose it's reserve of moisture (and often it's cultures of beneficial microbes) while calamitously being stressed by growing more crops than before.
One of the first lessons learned while the dust was still flying was that rows of drought resistant trees could help protect fields from the harsh winds and even help hold some moisture by collecting snow drifts. The next lesson learned was the idea of leaving stubble for cover during fallow years. Crop rotation now included a different variety of plants that grew at different cycles meaning that often you could still get 3 crops every 4 years. Marginal ground were more selectively cultivated. The concept of planting to prevent erosion along with other soil conservation techniques began to come into play.
There were massive soil conservation educational campaigns that persisted for over 50 years (as I remember them as a kid in the 1980s). Many of the farm ponds were dug well before the 1930s as I remember hearing about what years ponds dried up after the "dirty 30's". Yes many lakes were added but many of those were not put in directly after the 30's, one close to my family farm wasn't put in until the late 70's. Often these were put in with some flood control in mind which seems opposite of what you would think. Indeed most of the bigger man made lakes in my area of Kansas really aren't used for agriculture at all.
Now often you will hear of zero-till or no-till crops where the soil is not disturbed at all between plantings and weed control comes in the form of the stubble/straw covering the soil during the fallow times and herbicide. The equipment can now plant in the somewhat harder solid without the need for a series of implements to be drug over them to prep the field for planting. Additionally the varieties of crops have evolved greatly via selective breeding and now with some very targeted genetic engineering (not necessarily modifications, but targeted breeding to get the right gene expressions desired) that have resulted in plants that can yield more grain with less waste and better tolerances for drought and disease.
There have been some similar droughts and dry times in the area since the 1930's. In 1988 some areas saw a return of the dust storms. I asked survivors of the Dust Bowl how the storms of 88 compared because to me as a child they seemed very bad to me. All of them said that the 88 storms were mild in comparison. Since then there was a stretch where many of the Dust Bowl records were broken, but the improvements to how the land is/was farmed prevented the disasters of the Dust Bowl from returning. | [
"The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent the aeolian processes (wind erosion) caused the phenomenon. The drought came in three wa... |
why is alcohol so detrimental to fat loss/muscle gaining goals? what’s the biological mechanisms happening? | As far as I am aware (I'm not an expert so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) alcohol changes the way your body burns fat. Excessive intake means that your body is focusing more on burning off the alcohol rather than fat.
It's a myth that alcohol contains a lot of sugar, however, we generally mix alcohol with high sugar liquids (like coke.) Wine and beers also contain carbohydrates so this would also be detrimental to weight loss/gain goals. | [
"Heavy alcohol consumption over a period of years can lead to \"reverse tolerance\". A liver can be damaged by chronic alcohol use, leading to a buildup of fat and scar tissue. The reduced ability of such a liver to metabolize or break down alcohol means that small amounts can lead to a high blood alcohol concentra... |
why is shampoo usually translucent but conditioner opaque? | Because conditioner is marketed as a "cream". (In fact it's sometimes the case and used to be the case back in the day that people would call conditioner "cream rinse".)
We associate opacity with creaminess and moisturizing properties, while we associate clarity with cleaning properties.
Kind of like why Crystal Pepsi didn't do well as a product, and why the SNL spoof commercial for "Crystal Gravy" was so hilarious.
TL;DR It's all marketing/what we expect the product to look like. | [
"One reason is concern about the effect of ingredients typically found in commercial hair care products. Shampoo typically contains chemical additives such as sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate, which can irritate sensitive skin or if not thoroughly rinsed. Such chemical additives are also believed by... |
Does our mother tongue affect our face features in any way? | Are you asking if facial features have evolved based on the languages spoken in a particular area?
For instance, do Spanish speaking areas generally have more defined tongue muscles after centuries of rolling the R sound? | [
"Mother tongue is defined by Statistics Canada as the \"first language learned at home during childhood and still understood by the individual at the time of the census.\" Because some children are born into marriages between parents who use different languages in the home, the census allows individuals to indicate... |
will we run faster if we use 4 legs instead of 2 | It entirely depends on the configuration of our body after the results of the change.
If basically unchanged in form, the answer's a clear no. You can prove this by trying to do a crawling run on your arms and legs now, effectively treating your hands as your front feet. You can move along fairly well, but your pace will suck compared to an upright sprint, and it'll hurt like hell in very short order.
Now if you re-engineer your body instead so that your front arms are transformed to legs that are designed for speed and loadbearing instead of carrying and handling, and your rear legs are designed to move most rapidly while pointing ahead of your torso as opposed to directly down from it, at some point you may reach a changed form where you can keep up or exceed that upright running pace.
But you would look remarkably different as a result. | [
"Ultra runners can split up legs any way they choose, provided that the person assigned to run leg 1 also runs legs 13 and 25, the person assigned to run leg 2 also runs legs 14 and 26, and so on. Usually teams either switch runners after every leg, using one van, or switch runners after every other leg, using two ... |
how did early humans, or those part of small tribes and villages, survive genetic disorders of inbreeding and did not become extinct? | Humans have been apex predators for most of their history. There was never a time when the population of homo-whatevers was so low that mating became a genetic challenge.
By the time societies formed, there were more than enough humans to breed with. It doesn't take that large a population to guarantee genetic variation in a few generations.
Some research has been done to this effect for the purposes of planning future space colonization. One article I read suggests a population as small as 160 people would be sufficient:
_URL_0_
There was never a time in our history where inbreeding was strictly necessary for survival of the species. | [
"At first the Earth-human population dwindled. Then they formed a close alliance with one of the native tribes and also found that they could interbreed, which had previously been thought impossible. On this basis, they recover and unify the world.\n",
"An acute problem is potential inbreeding. The remaining popu... |
Since neutrinos DO interact with particles if they get lucky, such as atomic nuclei, do neutrinos interact with the strong force, or weak force? | Neutrinos interact via the weak force and gravity. | [
"Because neutrinos are neither affected by the strong force nor the electromagnetic force, and because the gravitational force between subatomic particles is negligible, such an interaction can only happen via the weak force. Since such an electron is not created from a nucleon, and is unchanged except for the new ... |
Would a box with a perfectly reflective interior have light inside? | There is no such thing as a perfectly reflective material. Any apparently reflective material will still absorb a small amount of the light reflecting off of it. | [
"The physical properties of the box are designed to show \"diffuse interreflection\". For example, some light should reflect off the red and green walls and bounce onto the white walls, so parts of the white walls should appear slightly red or green.\n",
"The sides and back of the box are lined with a bright surf... |
Dark Matter, Black Holes and The Big bang! | There is a strong theory that says for the first 7 billion or so years the rate of expansion was actually slowing (even though everything was still expanding), due to the gravity of all the particles that were held in space at that time.
Over time though, even though the rate was slowing, the particles became too spread out. At this 7 Billion year point dark energy (the cosmological constant, or whatever you wish to call it) took over and the rate of expansion began to increase.
We are currently in a stage where the speed of expansion is increasing because the dark energy has become stronger than gravity has, due to the space between the objects that exert gravity.
Gravity is a principle of mass, pressure, and distance, whereas dark matter is held in EVERYTHING, so though its number (or strength) is low over the vastness of space there is enough of it to be more powerful than the force of gravity.
This was discovered by cosmologists who study [REDSHIFT](_URL_0_). | [
"According to the Lambda-CDM model, by this stage, the matter in the universe is around 84.5% cold dark matter and 15.5% \"ordinary\" matter. (However the total matter in the universe is only 31.7%, much smaller than the 68.3% of dark energy). There is overwhelming evidence that dark matter exists and dominates our... |
do things suspended in a magnetic field affect the weight of whatever the magnets are on? if i had a backpack that could do that an out something that was 5kg in it would i feel that much heavier? | Yes, when magnet A pushes on magnet B, magnet B also pushes on magnet A by the same amount. All field forces - gravity, electric, magnetic - work the same way. | [
"In other systems the weight is allowed to move, and its motion produces an electrical charge in a coil attached to the mass which voltage moves through the magnetic field of a magnet attached to the frame. This design is often used in a geophone, which is used in exploration for oil and gas.\n",
"In the presence... |
how does the mlb regulate the dimension of a park when its being built? | The rules
"Any Playing Field constructed by a professional club after June 1, 1958, shall provide a minimum distance of 325 feet from home base to the nearest fence, stand or other obstruction on the right and left field foul lines, and a minimum distance of 400 feet to the center field fence." (Rule 2.01)
Teams can request a waiver. If they are really short MLB might ask that the wall is taller. Minute Maid park is 315 feet in left field, but its 19 feet tall. They requested a waiver from MLB and were approved. | [
"Unlike those of most sports, baseball playing fields can vary significantly in size and shape. While the dimensions of the infield are specifically regulated, the only constraint on outfield size and shape for professional teams following the rules of MLB and Minor League Baseball is that fields built or remodeled... |
why do we feel cold when we have tummyaches? | One of the cranial nerves, those connected directly to the brain rather than the spinal column, runs through the abdominal cavity is called the [Vagus nerve.](_URL_0_) the Latin name means "wanderer" and indeed it does it is connected to and exerts a strong influence in many parts of the body.
Abdominal pain can stimulate the Vagus in a way that causes it to slow the heart rate, lower the blood pressure, and result in "breaking a cold sweat." | [
"Cold sores are the result of the virus reactivating in the body. Once HSV-1 has entered the body, it never leaves. The virus moves from the mouth to remain latent in the central nervous system. In approximately one-third of people, the virus can \"wake up\" or reactivate to cause disease. When reactivation occurs,... |
how exactly does a 1080p screen display a 720p video, or any other resolutions without an even scale? | It just scales the video as closely as possible. It will warp the image slightly, stretching it out to fit the display. Luckily, 1080p and 720p share the same aspect ratio (16:9), so the image doesn't have to be warped. You device just scales up each pixel to 150%, and you've gone from 720p to 1080p. | [
"The number \"720\" stands for the 720 horizontal scan lines of image display resolution (also known as 720 pixels of vertical resolution). The \"p\" stands for progressive scan, i.e. non-interlaced. When broadcast at 60.00 frames/s frames per second, 720p features the highest temporal resolution possible under the... |
how would the internet sustain itself if everyone used adblock? are there any other options for income than ads or a fee? | Plenty of websites make money without intrusive ads. _URL_1_ has been ad free since the beginning, and covers the costs of operations by referrals to websites that have merch for bands. _URL_0_, while using ads, make more money from their YouTube channel and merchandise than from their ads.
IMHO, pop ups and intrusive ads are on the way out. Google AdSense is here to stay, and websites are getting wise to other forms of income. | [
"Some content providers have argued that widespread ad blocking results in decreased revenue to a website sustained by advertisements and e-commerce-based businesses, where this blocking can be detected. Some have argued that since advertisers are ultimately paying for ads to increase their own revenues, eliminatin... |
How did Romans view the myth of Romulus and Rhemus? Were they at all interested in "fact" or was that not a principle of historical writing? | Specifically with regard to Romulus and Remus, it's interesting to note that Livy (not the most skeptical of writers) explicitly doubted, if not the story of Rome's foundation under the twins, at least the bit about the being raised by a wolf. [He says \(1.4\)](_URL_0_) that the idea that they were raised by a she-wolf probably comes from the fact that Faustulus' (the shepherd who found them after they had been exposed) wife Larentia was called "*lupa*" ("she-wolf") by the men in her town because of her "unchaste life." So, it's not necessarily a yes-or-no question - there could have been and probably were many different degrees of belief in those sorts of myths.
EDIT: driveling points out that "lupa" was supposedly slang for a prostitute, which I tried to imply with "unchaste life," but I shouldn't have been so lily-livered.
EDIT 2: Larentia, not Lartenia. Just a typo. Thanks, italianjob17. | [
"Although a debate continues, current scholarship offers little evidence supporting the Roman foundation myth, including a historical Romulus or Remus. Starting with Pictor, the written accounts must have reflected the commonly-held history of the city to some degree, as were not free to make things up. The archaeo... |
the recreational drug hierarchy. which drugs are worse for your body short-term, long-term, etc? | I wouldn't look at it as a heirarchy. Drugs all have different effects given they are used a certain way. Granted the long term use of drugs lead to different outcomes. You cannot objectively say some are worse than others when their effects are so different but still very severe.
I would rank it as this from best to worst from your body when used in the amount they are regularly used.recreational.
Marijuana
Psychedelics
Dxm
Ecstasy (mdma, x, whatever.)
Cocaine
Prescription painkillers
Crack cocaine
Heroin
Crystal Meth
This takes in a number of factors including cleanliness addictiveness and overall harm to your body. Surprisingly doing most drugs occasionally (once every three months) won't hurt you in any significant way as long as the product (and needle if required).are clean. It's just the addiction factor that makes the substances so volatile.
Posted from phone forgive any spelling or formatting errors.
| [
"BULLET::::- using recreational drugs in moderation, setting reasonable limits on the consumption and not allowing drug use to overshadow other aspects of their life (i.e. financial and social responsibilities)\n",
"Gabapentinoids produce euphoria at high doses, with effects similar to GABAergic central nervous s... |
how does the cell tower know what phone to send a call/text message to? how secure is this system? | Each phone has a unique ID, and it registers that ID with the tower as it connects. The tower isn't *physically* able to target one phone: it broadcasts the data tagged with the target phone ID, and all devices except that phone will normally ignore it. The data itself is normally encrypted.
However, we know that cellphone IDs can be "spoofed" and the call decrypted, thanks to news reports about the StingRay device such as [this] (_URL_0_). That doesn't mean that all calls are automatically insecure, but if authorities *really* want to listen to your calls, they have the capability. | [
"Mobile phones receive and send radio signals with any number of cell site base stations fitted with microwave antennas. These sites are usually mounted on a tower, pole or building, located throughout populated areas, then connected to a cabled communication network and switching system. The phones have a low-powe... |
Looking for book recommendations on Theodore Roosevelt. | I think the big one is Edmund Morris' award winning trilogy consisting of [*The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt*](_URL_1_), [*Theodore Rex*](_URL_0_) and [*Colonel Roosevelt*](_URL_2_). | [
"The Theodore Roosevelt Cyclopedia is a comprehensive project to publish, in one collection, the significant sayings, important conversations and writings (less his letters) of the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. Originally conceived by Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, a history professor at Harva... |
Is the atlantic ocean rougher and more dangerous than the pacific ocean? | Generally the roughest water in the world surrounds Antarctica due the ability of the wind and waves to travel across the world in relatively unbroken loop. As far as which has rougher waters... It really depends on local conditions more than anything. Large storms and frequency of hurricanes vs. typhoons could make a compelling argument or you could look for average wave height which im sure you can find from NOAA if you were so inspired. Certain latitudes have almost no waves due to the lack of wind. For fun look up the Sargasso sea and you'll learn quite a bit about ocean currents and waves. There is an equivalent collection of trash in the north pacific. Here is [NOAA](_URL_0_) to explain a little bit about what makes large waves. | [
"Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of or 23.5% of the global ocean and has a volume of or 23.3% of the total volume of the earth's oceans. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers and has a volume of . The North Atlantic covers (11.5%) and the South Atlantic (11.1%). The average depth... |
what do musicians hear through the headphones when "acoustic" with a band? | This is called a "monitor mix" and it can be whatever the performer wants. If they are singing it will almost always include their own vocals. If they are playing an instrument it will almost always include that instrument. Many performers will want to hear some of all the other instruments. When there is a drummer they will likely want some of the kick drum and the snare drum and maybe some hi-hat but usually not much else.
Again this is 100% up to the wishes of the performer. Sometimes there will be a click track to help keep them in sync with any pre-recorded playback. Sometimes there will be verbal instructions telling them which song is about to be played back or reminding them of solos or bridges coming up in the song. | [
"Listening to a binaural recording through headphones simulates the binaural hearing by which people listen to live sounds. For the listener, this experience is characterized by two perceptions. Firstly, the listener perceives being in close proximity to the performers and location of the sound source. Secondly, th... |
how does a hot and deserty country like egypt have such a high humidity? | Are you sure the humidity is that high or are you just use to a very low humidity? A quick google says the humidity there is only 33%, which is quite low when many places are at 80%+ right now.
That said, it does border nothing but water on roughly half the country, so that is a pretty big factor to humidity. Look at other countries surrounded by water and you'll notice much higher humidity than Egypt typically has (only up to about 60% from what I could find). | [
"Egypt has an unusually hot, sunny and dry climate. Average high temperatures are high in the north but very to extremely high in the rest of the country during summer. The cooler Mediterranean winds consistently blow over the northern sea coast, which helps to get more moderated temperatures, especially at the hei... |
how do actors improvise lines in movies? | Scenes aren't just shot in one take and then printed. To shoot a single scene, you do many takes -- one from a wide angle, one from medium, one focused on actor A, one focused on actor B, etc. Then an editor produces a final cut by mixing and cutting between a dozen takes, choosing the best angles and best times to switch, the best deliveries, and so on. And even before shooting starts, there's rehearsal. Actors will perform the scene with each other plenty of times before actually shooting.
So the footage you actually see in the final cut might be the 10th, 30th, 50th time they've done the scene, and the footage of the delivery and the response are usually separate takes. When you hear that an actor improvised something, it can mean improvised at any point during that process, not necessarily during takes used during the final cut. Improvisation *usually* happens in rehearsal, when there's less pressure, and joking around, messing with dialogue, and throwing the other actors off doesn't mean entire crews are resetting and wasting time.
When that happens, the other actors can try to improvise their best response on the fly, or they can break character and lose the scene, and then everyone restarts (not necessarily from the very beginning, usually just from a few lines before). If people liked the improv, the director can give his thumbs-up and say "Yeah, we'll put that in", brainstorm good responses or encourage the other actors to improv in turn. Or the director can give his thumbs-down and say "Shut the hell up and stick to the script."
The kind of improv most people imagine, where an actor just does something with no warning and full footage of the delivery and the response make the final cut, is usually only seen in multicam sitcoms like Seinfeld (the actors' stunned/amused reactions to Kramer's wild mannerisms and nonsense are often real).
| [
"Altman regularly let his actors develop a character through improvisation during rehearsal or sometimes during the actual filming. Such improvisation was uncommon in film due to the high cost of movie production which requires careful planning, precise scripts, and rehearsal, before costly film was exposed. Nevert... |
Theoretically how fast could a dial-up modem transfer files? | Let's clarify what the limits are. There is no law saying you can't go faster than a certain rate over dialup. There is however an FCC regulation (it's in part 68) that limits the power of your signal to prevent crosstalk between phone lines.
The theoretical error-free capacity of a channel is defined by three factors (this is the Shannon-Hartley theorem):
1. The bandwidth of the channel (i.e. the frequency range you can transmit on)
2. The amount of signal on the line
3. The amount of noise on the line
More and more advanced codecs can only more closely approach the theoretical maximum.
The frequency range for phone lines is fixed (300-3000Hz), the amount of noise you can't do anything about, and the amount of signal is capped by regulations. If you plug the real-world numbers into the Shannon-Hartley formula, then you'll get pretty close to the real world speed your modem actually connects at.
It's important to note that at present, most of the phone network beyond the line that connects your house to the phone company is digital, and doesn't digitize the contents of your call at much faster rates (generally 8000Hz 8-bit sampling). They may even use VoIP with lossy compression. | [
"Since the XMODEM protocol required the sender to stop and wait for an ACK or NAK message from the receiver, it tended to be quite slow. In the era of 300 bit/s modems, the entire 132-byte packet required just over 3.5 seconds to send (132 bytes * 8 bits per byte / 300 bits per second). If it then took 0.2 seconds ... |
why is b. obama always referred to as black? is mulatto an offensive term? why is a half-black person 'black' by default? | Because race is a socially-determined category in the US. The names used have less to do with hue than history. If you have any African heritage at all, in this country you're Black.
"Mulatto" is offensive because it's an artifact of an even more racist era.
EDIT (an hour after original post): Just for balance, [here](_URL_0_) is an interesting essay written in 1997 by a Radcliffe grad who chose to call herself mulatto. I wonder if the intervening 15 years have changed her mind? | [
"President Barack Obama is of European-American and East African ancestry; he identifies as African-American. A 2007 poll, when Obama was a presidential candidate, found that Americans differed in their responses as to how they classified him: a majority of White and Hispanics classified him as biracial, but a majo... |
why do wild bulls gore everything in sight at a rodeo? | Bulls are extremely aggressive and territorial. Prior to being released they are not docile, just stuck in a small space unable to move much. | [
"The rodeo is accused of using various interventions to increase the aggressiveness of the horse before its entrance to the run. Electric shocks are commonly used, leading to the death of an animal in 2012. The growing controversy around events like the Calgary Stampede and the Houston Rodeo led to a total ban on r... |
What makes (uncontacted) tribes so different from
us? | There hasn't been enough evolutionary time for there to be any significant genetic differences. There's more inter-individual genetic variation than inter-racial genetic variation. They don't "lack curiosity", they are just isolated from the outside world. Maybe some refuse to integrate because of fear or cultural reasons, the way the Amish refuse to use certain technology. | [
"Historically the Indian peoples of the North American continent rarely joined forces across tribal lines, which were divisions related to distinct language and cultural groups. One reason was that most tribes were highly decentralized, with their people seldom united around issues.\n",
"Examples include Irish, S... |
how did the nazi party fund their paramillitary groups before they took power? | From [an earlier answer of mine](_URL_3_)
The sundry issue of funding is one that does not demand popular attention when dealing with the rise of the NSDAP. It used to be taken as a given by Marxists both within and without the Communist bloc postwar that the NSDAP received ts funding from big business. While there were certainly powerful patrons that the NSDAP cultivated, historians like Gerald Feldman have shown that German business leaders were initially quite reluctant to back Hitler and that it was only in the last gasps of the Republic that they switched from supporting the mainstream German right to the NSDAP. By the same token, the NSDAP in its early years was also the beneficiary of clandestine state funding and support from illiberal components of the federal and *Land* governments. But this sort of funding dried up after the 1924 stabilization of the Republic and the NSDAP was a relative late-comer to radical right-wing politics. This situation meant that the NSDAP and its organs were left to their own devices for a majority of their funding, so they elected to turn to a source to finance their activities: their own membership. The post-Beer Hall SA was emblematic of the NSDAP's increasingly pervasive attempts to fleece its own believers of their hard-earned RM.
One of the most iconic aspects of an SA member was their uniform. While there is some speculation that the NSDAP managed to acquire a surplus of tropical uniforms for a defunct German African empire on the cheap, the origin of the SA's brown shirt is difficult to determine. While it is possible that their initial uniforms were from WWI stocks, NSDAP correspondence on uniforms from this period often described their shirts as Lettow-Vorbeck types, there was a heterogeneity to them in the early period. The infamous brown shirts were only became ubiquitous after 1924 and a brown shirt was only mandatory in 1926. The SA's uniform became more standardized under the auspices of Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, the commander of the SA post-*Putsch* until his re-replacement by Röhm in 1930. Pfeffer was a slippery individual and one of the innovations he introduced aside from a more hierarchical SA was a number of ways to increase revenue for the organization.
The SA was ideally supposed to be funded by the dues of regular NSDAP members and the SA themselves. Regular party members were expected to contribute several pfennigs per month as part of their regular dues to upkeep the protection arm of the party. SA men were also to pay for their own uniforms and likewise contribute to the organization's upkeep. This self-funding was a problem for a marginal political group like the NSDAP since dues were often in arrears and membership fluctuated constantly. Pfeffer streamlined the SA's revenue system so that the organization received far more money than it had prior. This included creating a mandatory self-insurance scheme for all SA men of 20 pfennig per month in 1928 and centralizing the supply of uniforms. In the latter case, the SA uniforms grew increasingly elaborate under Pfeffer's watch and he centralized the sale and distribution of this mandatory aspect of SA life. The production of the SA uniform was farmed out to small and middling clothing firms like Hugo Boss and then sold via the SA-controlled *Reichszeugmeisterei* (National Quartermaster's Office).
Despite its martial name, the *Reichszeugmeisterei* soon became one of the cash-cows for the NSDAP. In addition to the mandatory uniforms, the SA sold a variety of paraphernalia through this office. One of the more visible, non-military, items the SA sold were so-called *Strum-zigaretten* (Storm cigarettes). These cigarettes were branded with the SA logo and advertisements such as [this one](_URL_0_) emphasized the manly camaraderie of this powerful brand. Other ads like [this one](_URL_1_) emphasized the SA's lightning logo, but also employed some of the stark visual language of contemporary German advertising. The idea of a paramilitary hawking tobacco products came from a down and out NSDAP member, Arthur Dressler, who suggested in 1929 that the SA sell its own brand of cigarettes. Dressler's initiative bore fruit as the NSDAP was able to use its contacts with a Dresden-based cigarette manufacturer to form Cigarettenfabrik Dressler Kommanditgesellschaf. Much of the SA's leadership got in on the ground-floor of this establishment and the proliferation of *Sturm*-cigarettes swelled both the NSDAP's coffers as well as their own pockets. The *Sturm* brand also grew more sophisticated with different levels of cigarette. *Trommler* (drummer) was the budget brand, while *Alarm* and *Neue Front* were priced higher, as seen in [this advertisement](_URL_2_). But it was not just the addictive properties of nicotine that made this venture so profitable. The SA's leadership declared that *Sturm* was the only cigarette appropriate for an SA man and forbid their members from smoking other brands. While this ban was honored more in breach by the rank and file, this added to the market-base for the cigarettes. SA meeting sometimes had bag searches for non-*Sturm* cigarettes and there were fines and penalties for having non-party brands. Additionally, SA violence was also occasionally directed towards the non-NSDAP rivals for the *Sturm* brand. SA men would tear down the advertisements for their competitors, pressure tobacco kiosks to carry the *Strum* brands, organize boycotts, and in one famous case, physically blockaded the Dresden warehouse of the Bulgaria Company on the grounds it was a "Jew-owned" cigarette company.
These activities did not go unnoticed by the German business community. Germany's largest cigarette manufacturer Philipp F. Reemtsma cultivated connections with the non-SA NSDAP, Hermann Göring in particular, to protect his business after the Nazi seizure of power. This culminated in a bribe of 3 million RM to the state's forestry (Göring was among other things chief of forestry) and the SA's attacks on Reemtsma brands stopped over the course of 1933/34.
The actions of Reemtsma show the tangled and circuitous routes German business leaders took towards their embrace of the Nazi dictatorship. Firms like Hugo Boss that profited from their connection with the NSDAP certainly made the most of their personal connections with the party during the 1930s. But the type of SA merchandising that characterized the 1926-33 period was something that the new regime was more leery of once Hitler was in power. Hitler himself was always very jealous of his image and the dictatorship sought to limit kitschy depictions of Hitler. The *Reichszeugmeisterei* became a national office in 1934 and decoupled from the SA after the Blood Purge. The new regime used its quartermaster's office to homogenize and monopolize the NSDAP's products and paraphernalia. While corruption within the party was still endemic for the sale of this merchandise, there was less of the free-wheeling capitalism of Pfeffer era as exemplified by *Sturm* cigarettes. While the NSDAP elite still managed to enrich themselves through contribution, dues, and other sales to their members, this type of fleecing was more low-key once in power.
*Sources*
Siemens, Daniel. *Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler's Brownshirts*. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.
O'Shaughnessy, Nicholas Jackson. *Marketing the Third Reich Persuasion, Packaging and Propaganda*. London: Routledge, 2018.
Wiesen, S. Jonathan. *Creating the Nazi Marketplace: Commerce and Consumption in the Third Reich*. Creating the Nazi Marketplace. Cambridge, Mass: Cambridge Univ. Pr, 2011. | [
"AEG donated 60,000 Reichsmarks to the Nazi party after the Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933 at which the twin goals of complete power and national rearmament were explained by Hitler. They joined with other large companies such as IG Farben, Thyssen and Krupp in their support of the Nazis, especially in promotin... |
why stagnant water makes humans sick and can potentially kill them but animals and bugs have no problems with it. | It all depends what the organism is equipped to deal with.
One kind of example of this is when a person from the U.S. goes to a place like India. An Indian has been drinking Indian tap water for their whole lives and is used to the bacteria, etc. that may be in it which is why they don't get sick. But for the American, since get have not developed immunity, they will get sick from the water.
The animals that can drink the stagnant water and stay healthy have adapted to be be able to do so, while we have not developed such adaptations. | [
"Fish and other aquatic biota may be harmed by pesticide-contaminated water. Pesticide surface runoff into rivers and streams can be highly lethal to aquatic life, sometimes killing all the fish in a particular stream.\n",
"Humans also pose a threat to troglofauna. Mismanagement of contaminants (e.g. pesticides a... |
What makes up the atmosphere, and could we create one? | I don't think the plants will thicken the atmosphere, because plants convert CO2 into O2. There is no new gas that is being formed. it would thicken a bit if we would introduce plants that have already grown on earth and die and decompose on mars.
But there are a few other problems, Mars is lighter than than the earth and it will loose large amounts of its atmosphere due to lack sufficient graffiti. so we could probably thicken up the atmosphere of mars but we would have to do it continually to fight against the constant loss.
The atmosphere of mars is mostly CO2 but earth is mostly nitrogen.
Atmosphere of earth:
Nitrogen (N2) (78.084%)
Oxygen (O2) (20.946%)
Argon (Ar) (0.9340%)
Carbon dioxide (CO2) (0.039%)
Neon (Ne) (0.001818%)
Helium (He) (0.000524%)
Ozone protects us against UV radiation from the sun so it would be nice to have that on mars. | [
"BULLET::::- Earth's atmosphere — The atmosphere of Earth is the layer of gases, commonly known as air, that surrounds the planet Earth and is retained by Earth's gravity. The atmosphere of Earth protects life on Earth by creating pressure allowing for liquid water to exist on the Earth's surface, absorbing ultravi... |
Different type of /r/askscience question: What was the title of your dissertation/thesis? | "Relativistic dynamics and Dirac electrons in graphene"
defense in 2 days... sigh... | [
"\"The first thesis: The Transcendental Critique of Theoretical Thought: Prolegomena to Herman Dooyeweerd's Philosophy of the Law-Idea, was completed in 1956. For this he was awarded the Licencié en Théologie at the Faculté Libre de Theologie Protestante in Montpellier. He is the author of The Biblical Doctrine of ... |
what causes autism in the brain what are neurological differences in the brain? | Autism is not a 'disease' that comes from some kind of brain abnormality (pathology). It's a part of how any 'normal' human brain functions. It's the part of you that can focus on a task or sensation or idea so intently that you lose track of the outside world.
Almost anyone can experience this, because everyone is *somewhere* on a spectrum that starts at "totally unable to concentrate on anything" (which is itself an issue) and then goes through "can concentrate when required" (which most people consider 'normal') and ends up at "complete focus on an internal state" (which characterizes profound, non-communicative autism).
Like any analog spectrum (colors of light, for example) there is no 'natural dividing line' between 'normal' and 'autistic' but just as yellow is clearly distinct from green despite a perfect blend between the two, the diagnosis can be clearly made once an individual is far enough down the line. Asperger's disease, for example, is not a separate disease of its own (as it was thought to be when 'discovered') but is best thought of as the 'color' between 'normal' and 'autistic'.
*Everyone* is *somewhere* on the Autistic Spectrum, you just don't notice it until they start acting differently enough to stand out from the crowd. It's a normal part of human cognition taken to an extreme and as such doesn't require any pathology, although there are some types of brain abnormality that do have some symptoms similar to autism. I simply don't have a list of those conditions on hand at the moment, sorry. | [
"Unlike many other brain disorders, such as Parkinson's, autism does not have a clear unifying mechanism at either the molecular, cellular, or systems level; it is not known whether autism is a few disorders caused by mutations converging on a few common molecular pathways, or is (like intellectual disability) a la... |
is breaking the seal a thing? ... if so, why? | Not really.
You can wait as long as you want to go to the bathroom for the first time, it won't change anything. You will still need to go frequently.
Think of a water filter jug. You know those things that you pour water in the top then it filters it and fills up the bottom?
Now imagine you put water in to one of these where the filter was totally dry. It would take a bit of time for the water in the top to saturate the filter. Once the filter was saturated, it would start filling the bottom up. So you'd have a bit of delay, but the saturation of the filter would stay the same so once the water starts moving it will keep moving.
Now imagine you pour a cup of this water before the top has filtered all the way out. Doesn't matter when you pour the cup, the rest of the water in the top is going to filter out to the bottom at the same rate.
Now imagine that you keep putting water in the top as it filters out to the bottom. Now, after that initial delay, you have a never ending constant stream of water coming in to the bottom, no matter how many times you dump out the bottom.
Same thing with your bladder. You reached saturation point, essentially. It's just gonna keep coming until all that liquid you consumed is processed and shed.
Expelling this fluid won't change anything, start anything or end anything, your bladder is just going to keep filling up. | [
"Record sealing is the practice of sealing or, in some cases, destroying court records that would otherwise be publicly accessible as public records. The term is derived from the tradition of placing a seal on specified files or documents that prevents anyone from reviewing the files without receiving a court order... |
why does putting tape on windows help during a tornado? | Just in case your windows break, the tape will prevent it from shattering and all the little glass pieces flying everywhere. Easier to clean up and more safe | [
"Current advice is that opening windows in advance of a tornado wastes time that could be spent seeking shelter. Also, being near windows is very dangerous during a severe weather event, possibly exposing people to flying glass.\n",
"Hurricane coverings, commonly known as shutters, are used in hurricane mitigatio... |
how do glasses help a kid's eyes develop? | They do nothing to help a kids eyes develop. They correct vision problems helping them be able to see properly which helps motor development, and intellectual development. | [
"Glasses are beneficial to those who have severe nearsightedness, whereas individuals with retinal degeneration need training for the visually impaired, which is usually more beneficial when this is addressed at a young age. Younger patients start out having unimpaired vision, but it starts to deteriorate at a youn... |
self posts/non-karma on self posts | A self post is what you just did, a text based post with no image or link.
You accumulate 2 kinds of karma on Reddit, Link karma and comment karma. A self post does not have a link and it is not a comment, so no karma for it. This can allow things like moderator posts or other important messages to be upvoted heavily without the people worrying that the person is just karma whoring. | [
"Since 2006, each user has the opportunity to express their opinions on the site, by pressing the '+' or '–' button for comments and posts. In the same way, they can express their attitude to each individual user on their profile page. Depending on the number of the '+/-' entries the user receives, it is shown as a... |
why didn't coffee evolve the same way as tea, with everyone using little one-use bags of grinds just like tea? | Yes, it is a taste issue, but coffee bags do exist. They're just not as good as other methods of coffee making, although they are better than instant. | [
"In ancient China, compressed teas were usually made with thoroughly dried and ground tea leaves that were pressed into various bricks or other shapes, although partially dried and whole leaves were also used. Some tea bricks were also mixed with binding agents such as flour, blood, or manure to better preserve the... |
What degree of stimulus is required to roust a hibernating animal? What process does the animal go through upon a sudden awakening? | Digging for answers I found [this answer](_URL_0_) from a couple of years back that might be helpful. It mostly treads around your question, but hopefully it’s a helpful starting place. | [
"Distraction displays frequently take the form of injury-feigning. However, animals may also imitate the behavior of a small rodent or alternative prey item for the predator; imitate young or nesting behaviors such as brooding (to cause confusion as to the true location of the nest), mimic foraging behaviors away f... |
how capacitors work | First you have to think about the fact that "current" basically means that negative charges are moving one way through a wire, and positive charges are moving the other way. A capacitor is basically two conducting plates with an "insulator" between them called a dielectric. The reason it is called a dielectric and not just a insulator is because it has special electromagnetic properties where it blocks the flow of current, but it allows an electrics field to pass through it. So what happens is, the dielectric material will block the charges from passing through it. This is sort of like a traffic jam, and negative charges will all start building up on one plate, and all the positive charges that are moving the other way will start building up on the other. There will be no current passing through the dielectric, but because there is a large difference in the charge of the plates (one is largely positive and the other is largely negative) there will be an electric field in the dielectric (which means there will be a voltage across it). | [
"Capacitors are connected in parallel with the power circuits of most electronic devices and larger systems (such as factories) to shunt away and conceal current fluctuations from the primary power source to provide a \"clean\" power supply for signal or control circuits. Audio equipment, for example, uses several ... |
why do some internet services make it impossible to actually delete an account? what do they gain by holding on to an empty profile? | Just piggybacking on /u/ameoba 's answer, deletion is what's called an 'expensive' database action, especially depending on your underlying database software. Think of what has to happen to delete an account.
Firstly, remember that especially with user accounts, you almost always want the data to be clustered. That means if you query the database for account 1000 to 2000, you generally expect them to have all been created in the order they appear - account 1005 isn't created after account 1892.
And you also don't want any gaps. You don't want to have the software handle "oops, no account found". And you don't want to look at your database and go "Huh, why is account 1774 totally empty/blank/nonexistent?"
So if you want to actually 'delete' the item, you could actually remove it from the database, the entire record.
That could mean moving *every single account* that comes after it sequentially up in the database. That's huge. That carries a lot of risk. What happens if there's a power outage when that happens? What happens if something goes wrong?
So instead they just offer account deactivation. You deactivate the account. You can't log into it any more to do stuff. If you want, you can ask for it to be reactivated - that means they can cover their ass in case you delete it by accident. Now they don't have to do all kinds of crazy database things - it's just flagged as a deactivated account. | [
"The site allows users to hide their account profiles for free. Users looking to delete their accounts, even those made without the individual's consent, are charged a $19 fee. The \"full delete\" option claims to remove user profiles, all messages sent and received, site usage history, personally identifiable info... |
why is the windshield on my car more frosty than everything else in the morning? | The night sky is very cold (you can feel this by looking up at the sky and then holding something like a piece of paper between you and the night sky). Your car's windshield is at an angle, so it gets more exposure to the night sky's cold.
That heat loss is between your window and the sky can be enough to cause water to condense from the air and freeze on a night where the temperature is just above freezing (or cause extra frost when the temperature is lower).
Before refrigeration, the coldness of the night sky was used to make small amounts of ice in places where the [temperature remained above freezing throughout the year](_URL_0_).
| [
"The interior of a closed car parked in a non-shaded spot exposed to extensive sunlight can sustain sun and heat damage. Sunlight passing through the car's windshield produces the greenhouse effect, heating the interior to a temperature much higher than the outside air. Excessive heat and prolonged exposure to dire... |
"Prussian discipline" is a term that comes up quite a bit. In what ways was Prussian society more disciplinarian than other European cultures of the age? | Prussian discipline referred to both the state of Prussia and its inhabitants as well as the army. But it was used first for the army and then transferred to state - which is not really surprising given how highly militarized Prussia was. The French Marquis de Mirabeau (edit: I falsely attributed the quote to Voltaire, don't even know how I messed that up. I am sorry, I fixed it!) once said "Where some states have an army, the Prussian army has a state.".
During this time Prussia was ruled by Friedrich Wilhelm I., called the "soldier king" (and that was in the time no positive thing, it mostly referred to him having the bad manners of a soldier, while his love of his army was pretty normal for a monarch of the time), despite never fighting a major war. But he did love his army. And also, he loved Calvinistic virtues, and tried to brand them onto the country. These virtues contained stuff like discipline, industriousness, austerity, sense of duty and justice, subordination, modesty, loyalty and many more along those lines.
Theodor Fontane let one of his characters, an officer, say: "Was uns obliegt, ist nicht die Lust des Lebens, auch nicht einmal die Liebe, die wirkliche, sondern lediglich die Pflicht. Es ist dies außerdem etwas speziell Preußisches." (What lies upon us is not the joy of life, not even love, the true one, but only duty. It is that, which is specifically Prussian.).
In the civilian society, the "Prussian virtues" were at first frowned upon, but by and by, they began to seep in. The son of the "Soldier King", Friedrich II., used the highly drilled and disciplined Prussian army his father left him behind to achieve victory over Austria in the seven years war. In that war, the fabled Prussian discipline really became what the Prussians were known for, since they would, in line with the Prussian virtues, almost blindly follow every order. In German, this brought forth the term "Kadavergehorsam", which translates to "following orders as if you were a dead body with no own will whatsoever".
Fast forward some time until the reform era of "oh shit, Napoleon kicked our asses from the Rhineland to Königsberg" and the introduction of the levy system. With that levy system, almost every Prussian male got at some point in his life exposed to the harsh discipline of the Prussian army - and took it back with him into his civilian life when his duty ended. This was also due to the Prussian army trying to be extremely lawful, some injustices of superiors against soldiers were even taken in front of the parliament. So the idea was, that you had to succumb to the order and be disciplined, but in turn you enjoyed the same rigorous discipline by your superiors.
Now, for examples of Prussia's military discipline, they changed quite a bit over the time.
During the era before Napoleon, they would consist of the same old "run through this alley of your fellow soldiers who will beat you with sticks until you're dead" and such.
But after the defeat by Napoleon and the introduction of the levy system, that changed a lot. After that, the Prussians would mostly use jail time and additional drill and exercises as means of punishment. During the German War of 1866, there was the saying that the "Prussians are slow to shoot", which referred to them very rarely executing soldiers but rather punish by different means such as not to "waste" a soldier. Being a soldier was meant to be an honorable job - in contrast to the Austrian army consisting of men mostly pressed into service and only kept in line by draconic punishments.
So all in all, the Prussians were not really exceptionally harsh in their treatment of the soldiers, they obtained discipline in different ways, one of which was the infusing of the population with "soldatic virtues".
There once was a french saying: "It is an honor to be a Prussian, but it is no joy."
Sources (sorry, only got German ones due to me being German and studying in Germany):
Schoeps, Hans-Joachim: "Preußen - Geschichte eines Staates"
Jany, Curt und Jany, Eberhardt: Geschichte der Preußischen Armee vom 15. Jahrhundert bis 1914"
Willems, Emilio: "Der preußisch-deutsche Militarismus. Ein Kulturkomplex im sozialen Wandel"
Büsch, Otto: "Moderne Preußische Geschichte 1648–1947. (Band 2: Militärsystem und Gesellschaftsordnung.)"
In English I can only give you:
Craig, Gordon: "The Politics of the Prussian Army 1640—1945" | [
"The term \"Prussian\" has often been used, especially outside Germany, to emphasise professionalism, aggressiveness, militarism and conservatism of the class of landed aristocrats in the East who dominated first Prussia and then the German Empire.\n",
"The Prussian legacy of a mainly tripartite system of educati... |
Is it possible to use the Oberth maneuver around a black hole? If so what would be the result? | Sure. Depending on the mass of the black hole and the spacecraft capabilities you could gain quite a lot of speed from it. Or it rips apart your spacecraft. You need a big black hole to keep tidal gravity acceptable, so you have to establish interstellar travel first. | [
"As a black hole rotates, it twists spacetime in the direction of the rotation at a speed that decreases with distance from the event horizon. This process is known as the Lense–Thirring effect or frame-dragging. Because of this dragging effect, an object within the ergosphere cannot appear stationary with respect ... |
exactly how is smoking weed different from eating edibles. not in your mind but chemically. | When you eat it it gets processed by your liver into 11-hydroxy-THC. Which is said to be 5 times more psychoactive than when you smoke or vaporize cannabis. | [
"Comparing effects of eating cannabis products and smoking them is difficult because there are large margins of error due to variability in how different people smoke, with the number, duration, and spacing of puffs, the hold time and the volume of the person's lungs all affecting the dosing. With regard to eating,... |
how would universal healthcare in the us effect the economy? | If my basic internet sleuthing is correct: all the Republicans would move to Canada rather than pay for somebody else’s problems. This would drain the tax base and cause the system to collapse. Apparently it’s the worst thing we could ever do to the country. How dare you even suggest the idea of such a thing. | [
"Through all entities in its public–private system, the US spends more per capita than any other nation in the world, but is the only wealthy industrialized country in the world that lacks some form of universal healthcare. In March 2010, the US Congress passed regulatory reform of the American \"health insurance\"... |
how does glass become sea-glass? | It becomes smooth after 20-50 years of being tumbled by waves and tides, in contact with abrasive saltwater and rough sand. It's possible because sand is of similar hardness to glass (being made from similar materials), the sand is able to wear away the glass.
"Fake" sea glass is fairly easy to make in much less time. Usually glass is placed in a rock tumbler or treated with acid to produce the smooth edges and frosted appearance.
| [
"Naturally produced sea glass (\"genuine sea glass\") originates as pieces of glass from broken bottles, broken tableware, or even shipwrecks, which are rolled and tumbled in the ocean for years until all of their edges are rounded off, and the slickness of the glass has been worn to a frosted appearance.\n",
"Se... |
how do humans "learn to like" things? shouldn't we have the same response every time? | Not the same response every time, because learning takes place! When you were small, money had no value to you-- it was not conditioned as a reinforcer. Your caregivers gave you food, a place to sleep, etc. As you grew up, you started to learn that money was a method of accessing all of these great things, so money became valuable to you. As an adult, very few people would work if not provided a paycheck on an extremely consistent basis. Over time and repeated trials, money became a generalized conditioned reinforcer.
In the music example, there may have been pairing going on-- was the song played during other enjoyable activities? Enough occurrences of something you don't care for much paired with something you already like can make the thing you don't care for become more reinforcing eventually. You may want to check into operant conditioning and B.F. Skinner. :) | [
"Shared reference during an activity facilitates learning. Adults either teach by doing the task with children, or by directing attention toward experts. Children that had to ask questions in regard to how to perform a task were scolded for not learning by another's example, as though they were ignoring the availab... |
Sheets of Metal, Why do they make thunder sounds? | I hate to be the source of 'speculation' but I would be really surprised if it's anything but coincidence. A large sheet of metal is going to have certain vibrational modes set by its size and the way it flexes. It's not obvious to me that any of those patterns are repeated in thunder which is produced by something akin to an explosion of air as the electricity turns a portion of it into plasma and heats it to an extreme degree, and then repeats a few times very briefly, and then maybe some echoes off the landscape. | [
"A thunder sheet is a thin sheet of metal used to produce sound effects for musical or dramatic events. The device may be shaken, causing it to vibrate, or struck with a mallet. It is also known as a thunder machine, though this can also refer to a large drum used for a similar sound effect.\n",
"Thunder is the s... |
why aren't things that are inherently good for us addicting? while things that are naturally bad for us are? | The premise of your question is fundamentally flawed. The real question shouldn't be "why are bad things addicting", but rather "why can we even get addicted to something that isn't food or sex in the first place". Because the chemical pathways that addicting substances hijack are the same ones your body uses to signal that drives you to eat food and to reproduce.
Limiting your question to only physical addiction, I will try to explain.
Your body has a complex internal chemical signaling system consisting of thousands of different molecules. These molecules bind to receptors on the surface of cells and cause a change in that cell, like stimulating the production of another chemical inside the cell. Many addictive substances, like nicotine, are structurally similar to a naturally occuring signaling chemical in your body, and can bind to those receptors and stimulate a response in the cell.
Many of these signaling "pathways" are self regulating using a variety of different mechanisms, for instance a chemical signal that stimulates the blood vessels to constrict may also cause those cell to start releasing a different chemical that would stimulate other cells to produce less of the original chemical, thus lowering the concentration of the first signal chemical creating a feedback loop.
When you ingest/inject/inhale an addictive substance, like nicotine, you are completely bypassing the internal feedback loop that regulates that chemical signal. Your body does its best to cope with the excess signaling chemical, for instance, by reducing the amount of receptors that the substance can bind to (thus producing tolerance, a phenomenon anyone who has regularly drank coffee has experienced). If you continue taking the substance, your body can get to the point where it the natural levels of that chemical signal in your body is not sufficient to sustain normal function, if you quit cold turkey, the chemical concentration crashes very quickly and you experience withdrawal.
There are many substances that people take that can cause the effect described above that aren't usually
considered physically addicting. Testosterone (Steroids) is one example. Body builders bypass their internal hormone regulation system by injecting testosterone into their blood stream, after a short time (a few weeks) your body stops producing its own testosterone completely because it is getting more than it needs from the injections. When a body builder stops taking steroids their hormone levels crash and it can take several months for the natural production of testosterone to return to normal, causing severe symptoms akin to a menopausal woman. Caffeine intake also does something very similar (caffeine withdrawal is almost as severe as nicotine withdrawal), but is not considered physically addicting.
Now here comes the addiction part. If the chemical interacts directly with a very low level system, like the one responsible for pleasure or another important system (nicotine, for instance, stimulates acetocholine receptors, an ubiquitous neurotransmitter that is literally involved in almost all brain functions) , then the physical change in the cells can be disastrous to normal functioning. If you don't continue to take the substance regularly the chemical levels begin to decrease and can cause severe depression, anxiety, even physical pain. Your body cannot function normally without them. Quiting cold turkey can be physically impossible because the pathways involved touch on very strong, very low level urges, like the drive to find food, or have sex. These chemicals "hijack" very primal drives that our body relies upon to survive and as a result makes it so we have to rely on those chemicals to survive.
Why are most addicting things bad then? A substance that can so fundamentally affect your internal body chemistry and functioning is like a hammer over the head. The body is a finely tuned chemical system, there are hundreds of very intricately balanced systems that regulate your internal functioning, by bypassing it you bypass millions of years of evolutionary fine tuning that found the perfect balance to keep your body functioning. Its like going up to a complex machine and fiddling with all the dials, it probably isn't going to end well. However, that isn't to say that all addicting substances are inherently bad for you if used with a little more finese than a needle to a main vein. Nicotine is very addicting, but it causes very little negative side effects on its own (besides a mild stimulant effect that can stress your cardiovascular system), the smoke in cigarettes is carcinogenic, and being the most common way of taking nicotine it means you are taking in a bunch more stuff that is terrible for you. Amphetamines are addicting, they mess with dopamine (another neurotransmitter) receptors in very complex ways, however used in a controlled setting it can cause drastic improvements in performance and concentration (hence adderall), as well as a very strong stimulant effect, controlled consumption can be therapeutic to some, but the rapid tollerance that you develop for amphetamines means you need to take more and more just to feel normal and all the positive effects go out the window if you abuse it. Eventually, the amount that you need to satisfy that primal craving (the addiction pathway) is enough to make you catatonic and non-functioning (the other mental systems it affects), and you are now a methhead. | [
"Some claim the existence of “addictive beliefs” in people more likely to develop addictions, such as “I cannot make an impact on my world” or “I am not good enough”, which may lead to developing traits associated with addiction, such as depression and emotional insecurity. People who strongly believe that they con... |
Why do birds move their heads like stop motion animation? Why don't they have more fluid head movements? | Some birds, not all, bob their heads when they walk. The classic example is pigeons. Bobbing their heads allows the bird to fixate their gaze on an object while moving. It's a way to stabilize images and all animals have adaptations to do this, which differ by group and physiology.
Pigeons actually don't bob their heads backwards at all, that's an illusion. Pigeons have two phases of head movement; *thrust* and *hold*. The pigeon first thrusts ts head forward, then holds it in place as the body catches up.
[Wired has a great article](_URL_0_) that focuses on pigeons and is layman friendly:
> What the head bobbing lets pigeons do is momentarily fixate their eyes on objects. This gives the photoreceptors in their eyes enough time—about 20 milliseconds—to build a steady scene of the sidewalk world.
> Pigeons are able to move their eyes, but their longer, more flexible necks make it more efficient for them to do this motion tracking with their necks.
The article also mentions a study done in the 70's where pigeons were put on a treadmill. The pigeons did not bob their heads when the scenery around them was stationary, suggesting the bobbing is not for balance but instead a visual response to the moving world around them. The journal article [*The Optokinetic Basis of Head-bobbing in the Pigeon*](_URL_1_) is free to the public if you'd like to read it.
Edit - I had misread the question and while I answered it in a series below here it is all together -
Prey animals have eyes located on the sides of their heads, this includes most songbirds. Because they do not have binocular vision and many birds cannot move their eyes to see around them they need to move their entire head. They are remaining vigilent for predators, rivals, food, etc.
Birds need to move their heads quickly to compare before and after images. It gives them depth perception. They don't have an overlap of view given the spacing of their eyes so the rapid movements bridges this gap. | [
"Halteres and vision both play a role in stabilizing the head. Flies are also able to perform compensatory head movements to stabilize their vision without the use of their halteres. When the visual field is artificially rotated around a fly at slower angular velocities, head stabilization still occurs. Head stabil... |
The cultural reputations of Edison and Tesla portray Tesla as an unappreciated genius, and Edison as a cynical opportunist. Are these reputations fair? Was Tesla's alternating current superior and workable, and, if so, why didn't it become standard? | These reputations are based on a little fact, and are substantially unfair. Edison was an astute businessman who took advantage of opportunities (but hardly cynical). Edison was famous for a wide range of inventions - while many others contributed to the more-than-1000 patents of Edison, he was a prolific and successful inventor in his own right. Tesla, on the other hand, was much less successful in business, and was short of money in much of his life. Both were geniuses, both were prolific inventors, both were appreciated, both actively sought business opportunities (as seen by their investments in patenting their inventions - Tesla had over 100 US patents, and perhaps about 300 worldwide). Edison was much more successful in business, but that doesn't make him a cynical opportunist, nor does it make Tesla unappreciated.
One example of "unfair" regarding Edison is the electrocution of Topsy the elephant, often portrayed as Edison electrocuting an elephant to scare the public, to convince them that Tesla's AC was too dangerous. However, the AC/DC war (the "War of the Currents") ended in 1892 when Edison Electric became General Electric in a merger and went AC, and Topsy was electrocuted in 1903. (The electrocution of humans, and accidental death through electric shock, did feature in the War of the Currents.)
Tesla was also the recipient of many awards (including the Edison Award in 1916). He was featured on the cover of [Time magazine in 1931](_URL_0_). Westinghouse purchased his key AC patent for $216,000 (approximately $5 million in current dollars), after already having paid him large amounts in consulting fees and royalties. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize. His achievements were recognised. Certainly not unappreciated. Possibly under-appreciated (e.g., "He should have won the Nobel Prize, but didn't"), but given that there is no magic formula for just how much appreciation somebody should get for their achievements, this is a matter of opinion that can be argued either way. Inventions of electricity generation and distribution methods do tend to bring less appreciation than invention of things like the phonograph (Edison), light bulb (Edison (and others)) and telephone, radio, cars, etc. that are more visible in people's homes and lives.
His promises of wireless transmission of unlimited free energy, death rays, earthquake generators, thought recorders and many more remarkable inventions-to-come gave him a reputation as something of a "mad scientist". There is a small but active Teslaphile subculture that promotes Tesla as under-recognised, suppressed, cheated out of fame and fortune. Claims include suppression of his (obviously working) free energy systems and death rays. Edison is often cast as one of the villains.
> Was Tesla's alternating current superior and workable, and, if so, why didn't it become standard?
It did. It's still our standard. (DC is making a comeback for high-voltage long-distance power transmission, but it's still an overwhelmingly AC world as far as power transmission networks go.) | [
"Tesla was a good friend of Francis Marion Crawford, Robert Underwood Johnson, Stanford White, Fritz Lowenstein, George Scherff, and Kenneth Swezey. In middle age, Tesla became a close friend of Mark Twain; they spent a lot of time together in his lab and elsewhere. Twain notably described Tesla's induction motor i... |
why is it sometimes so satisfying to press buttons and flip switches? | problem solving (which these actions mimic in a simple form) is a catalyst of evolution | [
"Switches come in a variety of shapes and sizes depending on the action used to activate them (such as sip-puff, pushing, pulling, pressing, blinking or squeezing). Switches also vary in their colour and aesthetics. For push or press switches, the amount of force required to operate them varies or in some cases can... |
What is the system of proving something? Is there only one or are there multiple, more specific systems? What makes something proven? | Almost all math takes place in [ZFC](_URL_0_), which is strong enough to do almost anything you can think of. In more specific fields people will study objects with certain assumed properties, because that's basically the only way to get interesting theorems. (E.g. algebraists will limit their study to groups, which satisfy the group axioms, or analysts will limit their study to Banach spaces, which satisfy so-and-so, etc.) But these are not considered separate axiomatic systems so much as objects with certain properties.
For something to be proven it has to be… proven. That is, there has to be a proof. Not sure how else to say this. It's not enough that there are no counter-examples, because we might not have looked hard enough. For example:
Claim: There are no even primes greater than 2.
Proof: I can't find any counter-examples.
That's not going to roll. You have to prove that there cannot be any counterexamples. For example:
Proof: Let *p* be an even number greater than 2. Then *p* = 2×*q* for some *q* > 1. Thus *p* is not prime.
It's hard to say exactly how detailed your proof must be. The best I can say is that a proof is something that would satisfy a mathematician. If you have something specific in mind you should ask that instead. | [
"Different propositional proof systems for propositional logic, such as the sequent calculus, the cutting-plane method, resolution, etc., may provide different proofs for the same formula. Proof complexity measures the efficiency of the proof system usually in terms of the minimal size of proofs possible in the sys... |
Do different types of Arachnids eat each other? | Yes, spiders eat other species of spider and their own species quite often. Different species have different propensities for cannibalism however. | [
"BULLET::::- Arachnids: A race of hostile spider-like aliens. They have four walking limbs, two manipulator limbs (near the mouth), and two spinning limbs that shoot strands or globs of spidersilk. They are rumored to use captive lifeforms for food or to incubate their eggs.\n",
"Arachnids produce digestive juice... |
what are some of the causes of the huge variability in average salary (finance vs nursing for example) | Supply and demand, both for the field and people working in it. It’s good to have more skilled doctors, lots of people need doctors, but it’s hard to become a doctor. You need years of training and practice. So people are willing to pay more for a doctor.
Finances, while still important, don’t have the same kind of barrier for entry. It’s easier to get into finances, so there tends to be more people there, and so people don’t need to pay as much to find someone in finances. | [
"Other studies have shown that the Hay system, which evaluates jobs, undervalues the occupations that tend to be filled by women, which continues to bias wages against women’s work. Once a certain job becomes associated with women, its social value decreases. Almost all studies show that the percentage of women is ... |
what would happen if all the cockroaches in the world disappeared? | We'd be left with only crickets and spiders to complain about. | [
"A mass depopulation of cockroaches has been observed since the beginning of the 21st century in Russia and other countries of the former USSR. Observers have noted a quick disappearance of various types of cockroaches from cities and towns in Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus.\n",
"A ... |
What caused the Philippine American War? And what was the reaction of the journalists at home and the war correspondents abroad to American atrocities? | There was a thread not too long ago that asked similar questions that may be useful for you. [Thread here.](_URL_0_).
The reasons for the decision by the United States to engage in a colonial experiment are vast and I will provide you with three books to check out. The first is Ernest May's *Imperial Democracy"*, in which May argues for ideological reasons; the second is Walter LaFeber's *The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898*, perhaps most notable for LaFeber's focus on material and economic concerns; and the third, and I think most useful for you, Paul Kramer's *The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines*, which brings into the history Filipino accounts and really delves into the issues of empire, race, and colonization. | [
"In the late 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer and other yellow journalism publishers goaded the United States into the Spanish–American War, which was precipitated when the U.S.S. Maine exploded in the harbor of Havana, Cuba.\n",
"Although yellow journalism, a type of sensational reporting that had little concern wi... |
why have processor speeds been stuck at 2-4 ghz for a long time? | Intel was famous for trying to push clock speeds to the maximum in the early/mid 2000s with their Pentium 4 lineup. However, they found that increasing clock speeds, and consequently a need for higher core voltages, DRAMATICALLY increased power draw. Increased power draw means a lot more heat that has to be disposed of, and that presents it's own issues.
Instead, other approaches to getting faster processors included designing cores capable of more instructions per clock, and processors with multiple cores. | [
"The two ARM processors in the GP2X can be overclocked beyond their rated speed in software. The maximum speed one can reach through overclocking varies from system to system, with about 1 in 50 reaching over 300 MHz and others barely reaching 240 MHz (many systems can be overclocked beyond 240 MHz with no problems... |
Why did the US Government make it so Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates have to be of the same party? | Before the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, the candidate with the most votes received the Presidency and the second most received the Vice-Presidency. All electors had one vote, only for the Presidency. From the viewpoint of men like George Washington, who pled with America to avoid factions, this seemed logical, as anyone voted in should work together to help America. However, as we all know, political parties emerged, and people began to argue.
In 1796, America voted in John Adams, a Federalist, as President, and Thomas Jefferson, a Democrat-Republican, as Vice-President. These two were rivals, and so obviously America was not led by a united front. Tensions rose to a point where the next election would prove crucial, and so Federalists came up with a plan. Adams had a running partner, Charles Pinckney, but delegates decided to spread their votes to avoid a tie, which would go to Congress to be decided, and so one delegate voted for John Jay. However, Democrat-Republicans all voted their ticket, resulting in the aforementioned tie, going to the House of Representatives, with each state having 1 vote. This was ironic in the fact that a state like Delaware had the same voting power as Virginia, going against what the electoral college was intended for in the first place.
The vote itself is where the pre-Amendment system really destroyed itself; with a majority needed, Congress failed, again and again, to vote for a President. It took until the 36th vote for Jefferson to receive some defectors to gain the majority. Obviously, having the President and Vice-President disagree was not beneficial, and having parties use their one vote to manipulate the system went against democracy. And so the two-vote, one for President and one for Vice-President was proposed and ratified.
[_URL_1_](_URL_1_)
[_URL_0_](_URL_0_) | [
"The United States has had a two-party system for much of its history, and the two major parties have nominated vice presidential candidates in most presidential elections. Since the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1789, there have been 58 unsuccessful major party candidates for Vice President of ... |
why do so many parking lots, particularly in "shopping centers," seem so poorly designed? | I don't think it is terribly "difficult". It simply isn't the #1 priority.
When designing a parking lot for a shopping center, one of the highest priorities is simply density. They don't want a scenario where potential customers leave because they can't find a space, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to have the maximum number of spaces.
So you can end up with some odd intersections and non-optimal traffic flow patterns to squeeze in more parking spaces.
Yes, you risk having customers get annoyed and leave if the lot is too annoying (or risky) to navigate. But that is less likely than having them leave if they can't actually find a place to park. | [
"Parking space is becoming increasingly difficult to find as car parks are built over and car ownership increases. The covered parking included as a feature of many new buildings has not eased the situation.\n",
"In newer cities that have been planned mostly around the use of automobiles, public squares are rare ... |
Did Roman provincial governors rule with autonomy in the Late Republic? | In practice, they had near total control over their provinces. Like mini-emperors in a province. Most governors, even the "good" ones, saw provincial command as a chance to make some money after the expensive bid for office (getting elected in Rome was fairly expensive and some positions, like Aedile, required out of pocket expenses for repair and games).
An example of the power they wielded, although this time in a way that benefited the people, is when Lucullus reduced the debt in the Asian provinces owed to Roman creditors and the Roman people (the area had risen up with Mithridates against Rome and stiff monetary penalties had been placed on them as well as Roman tax collectors exploiting them which had been part of the reason for the uprising, in the first place). This infuriated the Roman equestrians and the Senate. But there was little they could do about it, officially. He was in control. That a governor could make a unilateral decision that seriously impacted the money interests of important Romans shows how much power they wielded over their territory.
When Augustus took on sole rule of the Roman world, after the death of Antony, part of the rights voted to him by the Senate was proconsular command over all the provinces. At first for set number of years (10 year intervals) and then indefinite. So, he was stepping into a valid constitutional role that granted nearly unlimited power over the provinces. Such a powerful role consistent with that of an emperor (outside of Rome) existed and all he had to do was tweak it.
Technically, they weren't supposed to engage in an offensive war without consulting the Senate. There were a lot of ways around that. Caesar, for example, maintained the facade that his wars in Gaul were defensive.
Also, if they were engaged in corruption (which was the norm) or strangled the provincial people too much then the provincials could recruit a Roman, usually a Senator or at least of Senatorial class, to bring a suit against him in Roman courts. These happened all of the time but rarely resulted in conviction. One exception is the case that made Cicero famed, a successful prosecution of Gaius Verres, governor of Sicily. However, he was thought to be over the top in his corruption even for the time and Cicero was unusually gifted. Julius Caesar also made a name for himself in the early days by bringing these suits on behalf of provincials although without much success. However, these suits could only be brought after his term as governor was over. Like other magistrate positions, like Consul or Tribune, there was immunity while in office.
Romans were aware of the problem of corruption in the provinces. And had laws and measures to guard against it but they were largely ineffective. Little provincial administration took place from Rome itself. | [
"As the Roman Republic expanded, it reached a point where the central government in Rome could not effectively rule the distant provinces. Communications and transportation were especially problematic given the vast extent of the Empire. News of invasion, revolt, natural disasters, or epidemic outbreak was carried ... |
When I type on my computer, where does the actual electricity from my keystroke travel to and what physical changes does it cause? | The keyboard has a [key matrix](_URL_0_) so that each button corresponds to a unique x,y value. Different models of keyboard may have different key matrix layouts.
When a key is pressed, the key matrix identifies to the keyboard's internal circuitry which key has been pressed. The circuitry then translates the keypress into a piece of data - similar to how ASCII works - which identifies the key. Depending on the interface, there are various protocols for how this data should look in the wire: [here](_URL_1_) is the PS/2 protocol, for example. Once the data's ready, it gets stored in memory.
Once the data is stored, there are two major ways that it can get sent. The computer has to have a free bus for the keyboard data, so we can't just send it down the line if the computer isn't ready. One solution is "polling," where the computer just asks the keyboard if it has any data over and over. This is inefficient, so another option is to dedicate a physical "interrupt" connection from the hardware to the CPU. When you press a key, an interrupt signal is sent to the CPU saying "hey, the keyboard needs your attention," and the CPU then asks the keyboard for data.
The data then gets sent down the wire (or transmitted wirelessly) to the computer's USB/PS2/Bluetooth/etc interface. The controller on the PC identifies the type of data and formats it in a way that software recognizes. Software then determines what action to perform once hardware tells it what keys have been pressed. | [
"When the user pressed a key on the typewriter keyboard, a small amount of current from a battery flowed through the key into one of the contacts on the input side of the disk, through the wiring, and back out a different contact. The power then operated the mechanicals of an electric typewriter to type the encrypt... |
Is there any evidence that the United States purchased Alaska as part of a plan to connect it with the rest of the country (i.e. through Canada)? | Secretary of State William H. Seward who orchestrated the purchase of Alaska actually wanted to annex the entire pacific coast. The annexation bill of 1866 which never really went anywhere proposed voluntary annexation of British Columbia. A second proposal in 1867 also provided for voluntary annexation of British Columbia. In both cases the U.S. would have paid about 10,000,000 for the territory. There was a pretty significant movement in British Columbia to join the United States. When the United States purchased Alaska Britain feared losing British Columbia and quickly added it to Canada.
U.S. Secretary of State Seward wanted to acquire all of the Pacific coast for the United States. At one point he floated the idea of settling the Alabama Claims for British Columbia but was never able to get a committed response from Britain on whether this was a possibility.
The U.S. never made a serious offer to buy British Columbia. Britain never made an offer to sell it probably because in 1867 they had mostly forgotten it existed. | [
"The United States bought Alaska in 1867 from Russia in the Alaska Purchase, but the boundary terms were ambiguous. In 1871, British Columbia united with the new Canadian Confederation. The Canadian government requested a survey of the boundary, but the United States rejected it as too costly; the border area was v... |
how does slamming particles into each other in the lhc help us to make new discoveries? | Some of the most fundamental particles that make up atoms are really difficult to isolate and study. One of the ways scientists have been able to see them is to accelerate particles to extreme speeds then collide them with each other, seeing what comes out. This is what the LHC is designed to do. | [
"The experience from the operation of LEP and LHC and the opportunity to test novel technologies in the High Luminosity LHC provide a basis for assessing the feasibility of a post-LHC particle accelerator. The study delivered a Conceptual Design Report (CDR) by the end of 2018, in time for the next European Strateg... |
how do voice assistants like siri or google assistant say so many things? | I *think* it has a bank of "noises" or syllables so all of the noises are put together when talking, so your name will be made from those noises, like it is with most other names | [
"Voice assistants are interfaces that allow a user to complete an action simply by speaking a command. Introduced in October 2011, Apple’s Siri was one of the first voice assistants widely adopted. Siri allowed users of iPhone to get information and complete actions on their device simply by asking Siri.\n",
"Use... |
The "Moon Anomaly" | Keep in mind, the variations he's talking about is on the order of several *trillionths*. That's several millimeters. | [
"The existence of moonquakes was an unexpected discovery from seismometers placed on the Moon by Apollo astronauts from 1969 through 1972. The instruments placed by the Apollo 12, 14, 15, and 16 missions were functional until they were switched off in 1977. Moonquakes are not believed to be caused by tectonic plate... |
how do printers work so fast and efficiently? how does the ink not smudge all over the page? | Please point me to this magical printer you have that prints fast and "efficiently" all the time. | [
"To combat this drying, nearly all inkjet printers include a mechanism to reapply moisture to the printhead. Typically there is no separate supply of pure ink-free solvent available to do this job, and so instead the ink itself is used to remoisten the printhead. The printer attempts to fire all nozzles at once, an... |
why do the nsa and fbi actually need to gather our data? | They need to be able to have a file on everybody containing all of their transgressions (legal or otherwise). This way when they want to get rid of someone they can just pull up the file and have them arrested/blackmailed for whatever is in there.
This is the only thing that really makes sense. By their own admission, they gather much too much data to actively monitor and correlate. So they don't monitor it, they store it, and they only pull it up when they already have their target in mind. | [
"NSA was reported in 2008 to use its computing capability to analyze \"transactional\" data that it regularly acquires from other government agencies, which gather it under their own jurisdictional authorities. As part of this effort, NSA now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic email data, web addresses fr... |
How did people react to hearing their own voice when the phonograph was invented? | As it seems there is little source material to directly answer this question, I have attempted to give as informed an answer as possible, based on material regarding comparable situations.
First of all; your own voice travels not only through air, but also through bone and muscle (bone conduction) resulting in the alteration of vibrations or pitch. In consequence, people (especially kids) are shocked at hearing their own voice, if you had never heard it before, and it was put in a line up, there is a good chance you wouldn't recognise it at first try.
This means that in essence, this is no different from how it would have been back in the late 1800's.
However, while there is not much evidence (as far as I can find) on how people reacted on hearing there own voice for the first time in the late 1800's, there is quite a lot of material on public perception regarding other inventions around the same time, such as the telephone.
The 1870's and 1880's being part of the second industrial revolution carried a lot of changes, including electricity, recordings, commercial photography, etc. And it aided in the 'normalisation of technology'. This is not the dark ages, people realised they didn't have to kill every guy with a new toy.
When the telephone was invented, the public reaction was comparable to the reaction to most inventions of that time and after: people were intrigued and amazed, some thought it would bring the death of the respectable society (1977). However, through major businesses and a lot of publicity, it slowly seeped into our daily lives.
So far, so normal. But, whenever a new technology enters our world, there are stages of anxiety and scepticism (2003) as well. While they are overcome in the long run, individuals will often have to overcome the mental hurdles. When applied to hearing their own voice, this might have resulted in certain people being sceptical of the quality of the recording, thinking the recorded voice was not faithful or the result of a faulty machine.
So in short, it wouldn't have been all that different. Some people might have been sceptical - but you would get that reaction still if you did it with a thirteen-year-old for the first time - and in general they would have been just as embarrassed and have just as much fun as us.
Why your voice sounds different: _URL_0_
Public reactions to the telephone:
Ideology and the Telephone: the Social Reception of a Technology, London 1876-1920 (Jeremy Leon Stein, 1996)
How people deal with change:
Innovation, Change Theory and the Acceptance of New Technologies A Literature Review (A. Couros, 2003) | [
"The first public records describing voice recording were reported in a New York newspaper and the Scientific American in November 1877. Thomas A. Edison had announced the invention of his \"phonograph\" saying \"the object was to record telephone messages and transmit them again by telephone.\" Edison applied for ... |
If only the skull of a human is found during an archaeological dig, is it possible to determine the gender of the individual? | Yes, it is. The skulls of men and women are shaped differently. You can see just in the facial bone structure of living human beings that there is a difference. A studied anthropologist looking at the skulls wouldn't have much trouble. | [
"However, the pelvis is not always present, so forensic anthropologists must be aware of other areas on the skeleton that have distinct characteristics between sexes. The skull also contains multiple markers that can be used to determine sex. Specific markers on the skull include the temporal line, the eye sockets,... |
why does faster flow in a hose cause more pressure, given bernoulli's principle? | The pressure increases downstream of your thumb, and the velocity decreases. Less water flows out of the hose.
But as the water passes the restriction, your thumb, the pressure drops and the velocity increases.
You can only feel the pressure increase, because you don't feel the water after it leaves. | [
"One result of Bernoulli's Principle is that slower moving current has higher pressure. This principle is used, for example, by some benthic suspension feeders. These smart guys dig holes like U tubes with one end higher than the other end. Because of bottom drag, as water flows over the bottom the lower tube openi... |
How much validity is there to the "Right and Left Brain" dynamic as a reference to math and artistic capability? | It's generally considered a myth, mainly because while there exists functional differences between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere, they are also both very interconnected and often participate in the same task (whether it's language or spatial ability).
The whole left-logical; right-creative is pretty much garbage that's perpetuated by misinterpretations of data (similar to the 10% of the brain myth) and popular media not having even a general understanding of how the brain works.
For example, that spinning pirouette illusion thing really annoys me, it has nothing to do with being left or right "brained". It's just an optical illusion that says way more about our visual system than anything else.
/rant | [
"In \"The Divided Brain\", McGilchrist digests study after study, replacing the popular and superficial notion of the hemispheres as respectively logical and creative in nature with the idea that they pay attention in fundamentally different ways, the left being detail-oriented, the right being whole-oriented. Thes... |
Why was England the only Germanic nation to keep common law? | It was not a question of simply keeping the old Germanic tribal law or moving to something else. The common law in England emerged from the intersection of local expressions of Anglo-Saxon law (with its germanic roots), on the one hand, with the Norman French law, on the other, in the 11th and 12th centuries and following. They were trying to bring together these two systems along with some kind of local, intuitive sense of fairness.
[This is a good source.](_URL_0_) | [
"While English common law originated in thirteenth century England and has then been transplanted through colonization and occupation to England’s ex-colonies (United States, Canada, Australia, and several countries in Central America, Africa and Asia), the Scandinavian common law was developed in Denmark and Swede... |
How come people in Spain and other Spanish speaking countries have Islam/Arab influenced names like Ibrahim and Omar? | I think you're underestimating the significance of Islamic rule. They were there for around 800 years - from the first invasion in 711 to the fall of Granada in 1492.
I think you're also underestimating the size of the Islamic conquest of the Iberian peninsular. They didn't just rule "parts of Spain". They ruled almost all of it. Only very small areas in the North remained Christian-dominated.
With that in mind, it would be amazing if those peoples' descendants didn't have Arabic-influenced names. There's a strong influence on the Spanish language too. Perhaps the most obvious example is the word "ojalá", which means "Hopefully", or "I hope". It has an Arabic origin, meaning "God willing". | [
"The use of Arabic names is prominent among the Filipino Muslims. The country has Islamic influence from what are now Arabs, Persians, Malays, Indonesians, and Indians, who have traded with ancestors of Filipinos, and introduced Islam to the southern parts of the archipelago beginning in the 13th century. Some name... |
does bank account with all money which my country hold exist ? | I once heard a guy on the radio who told that he performed transactions on the Dutch government national bank account, account number "1" at The Netherlands Bank. For instance, when the Netherlands needs to pay fees to the European Union, it is done from this bank account. I'm not sure if this account "holds all the country's money", but these kind of national bank accounts exist. | [
"Even where a bank has branches or affiliates in multiple jurisdictions, balances in a foreign currency account in one jurisdiction are held with a correspondent account at either that bank's branch or affiliate in the foreign country, or at another institution. For example, HSBC receives US dollars at its affiliat... |
how does the science behind the inheritance of skin colour work? | Skin color is controlled in significant part by genetics, which you inherit from your parents. However, there's a number of these genes, not simply (for instance) a white gene or a black gene. These genes can vary in dominance, with some favoring darker skin, lighter skin, or not heavily favoring either.
When parents have a kid, they get some grouping of these genes from either parent, and the result determines their skin color, without necessarily matching the skin color expressed in either parent, since they aren't guaranteed to have the same grouping. | [
"Genes affecting coat color generally do so by changing the process of producing melanin. Melanin is the pigment that colors the hairs and skin of mammals. There are two chemically distinct types of melanin: pheomelanin, which is a red to yellow color, and eumelanin, which is brown to black. Melanin is not a protei... |
Why are most, if not all antiviral drugs designed to attack the virus indirectly such as during replication and never directly such as binding to the virus, making it useless? | Viruses get inside a cell, replicate within it then burst out and travel to the next cell to do the same. This makes it very difficult and/or inefficient to target the viruses directly as most of the time they’re protected within a cell.
Interrupting the process is able to be done despite the protection of the cell they’re currently hiding inside, which gives a much better success rate of stopping the virus. | [
"Antiviral drugs are often nucleoside analogues (fake DNA building-blocks), which viruses mistakenly incorporate into their genomes during replication. The life-cycle of the virus is then halted because the newly synthesised DNA is inactive. This is because these analogues lack the hydroxyl groups, which, along wit... |
What's stopping planes from being built increasingly larger just by scaling up? | If you multiply all dimensions by a factor 2, then the mass of the aircraft will more than simply double. In the simple approximation, where the aircraft is a solid with a constant density throughout its structure, doubling all dimensions would increase the mass by a factor 8 (2 * 2 * 2, since length, width and height are doubled). On the other hand, the lift scales with the surface area of the wings, so it would only go up a factor of 4.
So you can't simply multiply everything by 2 and call it a day. You'd have to put care into redesigning the airplane to increase its size, scaling up certain parts more than others and stretching things in one dimension, but not the other.
But on the more practical side, /u/ididnoteatyourcat already mentioned that many airports are unable to accommodate the biggest airplanes (primarily the A380). That's not all though. There are also economical reasons, because it turns out that flying very large aircraft like the A380 doesn't work that well. The A380 isn't a commercial success and only a few airlines manage to fly a large number of them with good results. For most airlines, operating smaller and more fuel efficient aircraft more frequently throughout the day gets them better results than using a very large machine. | [
"Large aircraft allow the transportation of large and/or heavy payloads over long distances. Making an aircraft design larger can also improve the overall fuel efficiency and man-hours for transporting a given load, while a greater space is available for transporting lightweight cargoes or giving passengers room to... |
why do human beings, as a species, get such enjoyment from picking on each other and hurting each others' feelings, even among supposed friends? | Humans are a social species, and we highly value (and fight for) our rank within our peer group. Showing your peers that you are tougher than them, and deserve a higher position than them, is part of how you gain rank and thus better access to resources, mates, and decision-making power. | [
"These behaviors facilitate interaction between members of the same species and are central to a species' connection to the surrounding world. Think about this from your perspective. Humans are able to feel the same sorts of complex emotions that most other humans feel, and these emotions often elicit certain behav... |
How important was Cortes in the conquest of Mexico? | He kind of orchestrated and led the native coalition and Spanish troops that defeated the Aztecs, who were the most powerful state in Mexico at the time.
I'm not sure what you are going for here. | [
"Before Cortes's 1519-21 conquest of Mexico, he had been a colonist, administrator, and conquistador in Hispaniola (from 1504) and Cuba (from 1511). He never traveled to Darien, but could have seen the Pacific sometime after his conquest of Mexico or during his 1524-26 visit to Honduras. Later during his governorsh... |
what happens to the water elevation of a lake when a drop of water falls in? | it evenly distributes. Any time you have a raised area in the water it will "spill" over since there is nothing holding it back. It will continue to "spill" until it is even with everything else. | [
"20 - 15 ka: \"Dropping lake level.\" There was a sudden fall in lake level at the beginning of this period. Sand delta terraces from this time period indicated a lake-surface altitude of 2035 m. Recorded δO increased over this time period, reflecting falling lake level.\n",
"In both cases, the final depth of the... |
Why are ancient oracles or seers in TV often portrayed as ugly, old, blind and horny men. And how did they rise to power? | > The Oracle of Delphi in "300"
Uhhhh...so...*300* made that up...The oracular individual at Delphi was not a man, but the Pythia, the priestess to Apollo. There is only [one possible depiction of her](_URL_0_[1].JPG), on a bowl of the so-called Codrus Painter, and that identification is disputed. The selection process of the Pythia is even more poorly understood than the oracular process. In some texts the Pythia appears to generally be an old woman, but in others she is young (c.f. the literary treatment of the Sibyl, who likewise is sometimes young and attractive yet were also said in tradition to be old women who lived to extreme age, prompting Petronius' joke at Satyricon 48, most famously quoted by T.S. Eliott at the beginning of *The Waste Land*). Plutarch centuries after the Classical Period in Greece wrote that the Pythia was not chosen from the aristocracy, not that that means anything for her appearance, but that's about all we know.
There are quite a large number of divining methods in classical antiquity, so already this question is sort of doomed. Even if we restrict ourselves to just μάντεις and προμάντεις like the Pythia, that is actual individuals, through whom the god either spoke (πρόμαντις) or who were gifted with prophecy of their own (μάντις) the question is still kinda doomed, cuz there's a lot. They do not tend to follow a pattern in the literature. They can be men or women. They can be disfigured and ugly, or exceedingly beautiful (e.g. Cassandra, a real babe). They can be young, old, timeless, all kinds of shit. I suspect that what's being played on is the literary trope common to both prophets and magicians, two categories that often overlapped (e.g. Medea, who is both a diviner and a nasty witch). Often the gift of prophecy (or other supernatural power) is associated in the literature with some sort of physical price. The most famous example would probably be Tiresias, the great heroic prophet (along with Calchas), who is blind. But he's usually just thought of as a regular old guy, he's not particularly disfigured or anything. Another example might be the Graeae, who helped Perseus in his battle against the Gorgons. By Aeschylus' time they were apparently only possessed of one tooth and one eye that they had to share (their numbers, which in Hesiod are only two, have also swelled to three in Aeschylus). But again, to complicate things, the Graeae are not particularly ugly, at least not in the texts. Aeschylus says they were swan-shaped (κυκνόμορφοι, whatever the *fuck* that means) and Hesiod calls them beautifully-cheeked (καλλιπαρῄους, a standard Homeric epithet for beautiful women) and says that they're well-dressed (Enyo even wears a pretty saffron robe). Further, Hesiod doesn't seem to know about the single eye/tooth problem. Another complicated example is to turn back to Cassandra, who is also charged a price. But her price is mental--in the tradition known to Aeschylus, Cassandra rejected Apollo's sexual advances and was given the gift of prophecy with the curse that no one would ever believe her.
But these are only a few examples of the bajillions of oracular individuals present in the classical texts, many of whom (I would confidently say most, but I would have to check through an awful lot of texts to be able to say that in a paper) aren't old, disfigured, or crippled in any way. Certainly there is *no* attestation of oracles being selected for physical disabilities or ugliness. Indeed, the Egyptian magical papyri (of the Hellenistic and Roman periods) that deal with spells intended to bind the god to a πρόμαντις for divination tend to prefer attractive young boys as their oracular objects. You're looking at Hollywood, nothing more
I have to say I'm very confused why you think nobody would listen to someone who's ugly...I can think of a large number of unattractive people in extremely important positions of leadership... | [
"Both oracles and seers in ancient Greece practiced divination. Oracles were the conduits for the gods on earth; their prophecies were understood to be the will of the gods verbatim. Because of the high demand for oracle consultations and the oracles’ limited work schedule, they were not the main source of divinati... |
Hypothetically, is it possible to have a nuclear powered aircraft (what about a passenger jet)? Has such a thing been attempted? | Ah! I'm useful.
There were plans by both the US and the USSR to build nuclear-powered planes but the biggest hurdle was weight. The planes would be too heavy if effective measures were taken to protect the crew from radiation. I'm pretty sure that not a single prototype has actually flown under power from nuclear propulsion, but I know that at least the US actually did develop an effective propulsion system prototype in ground tests. It was basically a nuclear reactor that sent the generated heat via tubing to modified jet engines. The heat from the tubes ignited the compressed air from the intake and spun the turbines, no need to combust jet fuel. It was actually fairly simple and it worked.
| [
"In February 2003, the non-peer reviewed \"New Scientist\" wrote about the possibility of an IGE-powered airplane, a variant on nuclear propulsion. The idea was to utilize Hf (presumably due to its high energy to weight ratio) which would be triggered to release gamma rays that would heat air in a chamber for jet p... |
Why are duck billed platypuses considered to be such a strange species? | because it's rad as hell.
But:
1) males are venomous (there are ~7 venomous mammals)
2) No stomach
3) It's an monotreme. Which means it lays eggs and doesn't have nipples for milk production. It "sweats" the milk.
4) They have 10 sex chromosomes. "We" have no idea how it works.
5) they have electrolocation
Honestly, just check out the wikipedia on them.
_URL_0_ | [
"In its native range, the fanned tail is distinctive, allowing to distinguish this species from the freckled duck (\"Stictonetta naevosa\") which has similar size, colouration, and habits. The blue-billed duck (\"Oxyura australis\") has a similarly shaped tail, but the main colour of its males in breeding plumage i... |
Were there many Japanese nationals in Nazi Germany? If so, how were they treated by the Nazi government and the German people, despite not being "Aryan" but still being citizens of an allied nation? | **Part 1/2**
I've written on the treatment of Asian nationals in Nazi Germany more generally in [this old answer](_URL_1_) where I cite the most known case of the Chinese community in Germany.
In 1935 there were about 1.500 to 1.800 Chinese people in Germany, most of them living in Hamburg and Berlin having been sailors and settling down there. The Chinese in Germany were faced with several discriminatory measure, especially since many had ties to leftism and some had even served with the Republicans in Spain.
In 1938, the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) under Reinhard Heydrich instituted the Zentralstelle für Chinesen, a bureau with the specific task of preventing Chinese immigration to Germany and controlling those Chinese who lived there. In Berlin, the members of this RSHA bureau interned all the Chinese living there in Arbeitserziehungslager Langer Morgen. Arbeitserziehungslager were not Concentration Camps in that they were not run by the WVHA but instead by the local Gestapo. These camps were smaller but the living conditions there were not significantly less brutal than in the Concentration Camps.
In Hamburg, in May 1944 the Gestapo raided the part of town to which the Chinese living there had been forcibly confined in 1942. The so-called "Chinesenaktion" resulted in an additionally 130 Chinese being sent to Langer Morgen, where some of them such as Chan Ho Bau and Liang Wong were murdered.
While there is obviously some scholarship on the aforementioned Chinese community, there is little on the Japanese community in Germany. There only is one article I could find: ["Nazi racism towards the Japanese" by Harumi Sidehara Furuya](_URL_0_), written in 1996. While the article itself does have some weaknesses in that it f.ex. puts a huge amount of faith into passages from Mein Kampf, which by the time the Nazis had taken over power were mostly nomenclatura when it came to virtually any subject except Jews and communism, it is nonetheless interesting for drawing a picture of the treatment of Japanese nationals and Japanese-Germans by the Nazis via the files of the German Foreign Office for there seems to have been a lot of communication between representatives of Japan and German officials regarding this issue.
The Japanese community in Germany was rather small. Furuya writes of about 500 Japanese people in Germany and approximately four dozen Japanese-German individuals in the 1930s. Like in the case of Afro-Germans, outside those born of relations with French occupation soldiers after WWI, this was far too small a community to have been thought of when formulating various racist laws in Germany and hence, for the longest time whether they were considered to fall under Aryan laws was unclear. In 1938, Furuya writes,
> Ambassador Nagai demanded clarification from the German Foreign Ministry on the official German stance on the Rassenproblem. Nagai warned Assistant Secretary of the Foreign Ministry, Bernhard von Bülow, that German-Japanese relations would deteriorate if the Japanese ever came to be regarded as „colored,“ pointing to the racial discrimination against the Japanese in the United States and the ensuing bitter American-Japanese relations. Von Bülow promised Nagai that the German government would prevent the use of offensive expressions and avoid misunderstandings on this issue.
Subsequently, then foreign minister Neurath and other officials also clarified that Japanese individuals were to be exempt from the ban of marriages between Germans and individuals from "other races" in order to avoid upsetting Japanese officials.
However, while such insurances were frequently given by the Germans, in practice Furuya documents cases of discrimination based on the idea that Japanese individuals were "not Aryan". She cites f.ex. the case of Dr. Otto Urhan, biologist for the Institute of Biology for Agriculture and Forestry, who was fired in 1933 on account of one Japanese parent and of the daughter of Dr. Takenouchi, a sales representative of the Sumitomo Group in Berlin. Takenouchi's nine year old daughter was apparently hit by other children in school in October 1933 because she was not white – a case that made headlines in Japan. But while these cases show that in what can be conceived as the every-day practice of Nazism, Japanese individuals were confronted with racism and discrimination based on the idea of them being "non Aryan", it also bears pointing out that both of these cases took place five years before the German foreign office clarified the Third Reich's stance on Japanese individuals in Germany and that in 1933 a notably different Zeitgeist existed in the freshly created Third Reich than did in the Germany of 1938.
In ensuing years, an inner-party controversy existed in the NSDAP about the exact racial classification and treatment of Japanese individuals and the Japanese as a whole, a definitive conclusion was never really reached until diplomatic conveniences in the relations with Japan virtually dictated that Japanese individuals were not to be officially discriminated against. As Furuya summarizes: "the Nazi racial laws were ambiguous, but allowed for racial discrimination against individuals of Japanese descent – both institutional discrimination based on their legal status as „non-Aryans,“ and discrimination in the realm of marriages."
Something peculiar becomes apparent in the case studies Furuya describes in her article: The about 500 Japanese nationals residing in Germany in the 1930s were for the majority either affiliated with the official Japanese diplomatic representation, business men or students at German universities and they – for an overwhelmingly large part – did not report instances of discrimination during their time in Germany, most likely for the reason of German realpolitik towards Japan. Most cases of discrimination Furuya details concern German nationals with Japanese parents, grandparents, or spouses, who numbered at about 50 people all in all.
The cases Furuya cites are all from the files of the German-Japanese society that served as a place individuals who were either Japanese nationals or had Japanese ancestry or spouses turned to to detail the hardship they experienced. She cites f.ex. the case Hilde O., a half-Japanese German citizen:
> She reported to the DJG in January 1936 that she and her Japanese mother had been verbally insulted on the open streets in the rural town of Naumburg, in particular by one retired civil servant and his wife, who yelled after them:„ ,Asian, German-Japanese mish-mash, African-Chinese ... Japanese out‘, etc.“ Ms. O. wrote that even their friends had come to alienate them since anybody who interacted with them would be committing a Rassenschande. In such a rural town as Naumburg, she wrote, psychological association between her and a Rassenschande spread so fast that consequently, she was not able to get a job, nor would she be able to marry. Therefore, she requested an official passport-like certificate proving that she was German.
O. was subsequently informed by the German interior ministry that while she wasn't considered Aryan, she counted as exempt from racial discrimination laws and advised her to file a libel complaint. What further happened is not recorded.
| [
"The Japanese were subject to Germany's racial laws, but in a more lenient manner compared to \"non-Aryans\" who had not been granted \"Honorary Aryan\" status. Hitler's government began enacting the laws after taking power in 1933, and the Japanese government initially protested several racial incidents involving ... |
explanation the human immune system, li5. | [](/awyeah "I'm a medical student")
The immune system is comprised of two parts: the innate and the adaptive system. The innate attacks anything they feel as dangerous, whereas the adaptive will counter specific antigens. It's the difference between shutting the door of the city hall, and installing a system that keeps felons out.
The innate immune system is comprised of several parts: firstly you skin, and the inner lining of your mouth, gut etc. Cells (e.g. bacteria) will have to get through this layer to enter your body and infect you. Just like they need to get through the walls/doors of the town hall.
Secondly, you have macrophages and so called Dendritic cells that will 'eat' anything they do not recognize as being part of your body. This is comparable to the security allowing only people through with a key-card and kicking everybody else out. They will then present a part of that foreign (that's the term....) cell to other cells: the lymphocytes. (B & T) This is the security guard taking your picture and uploading it to the database, so everybody else will know what to look out for.
The lymphocytes are subdivided in 2 main categories, which are both subdivided even further:
* B lymphocytes, consisting of
* Plasma cells
* Memory cells
* T lymphocytes, consisting of
* T- helper cells (subdivided, but this is omitted to keep it within limits)
* Cytotoxic T cells
B-cells are formed in the bonemarrow, T-cells in the thymus. Both circulate the blood and lymphatic system, which is where they are activated.
Each lymphocyte has a specific receptor, that can only notice one kind of antigen (facial recognition software in the mugshot database).
When a T-cell encounter its antigen, the response depends on which type of cell it was that encountered the antigen.
* Th cells will activate other cells: the macrophages, B-cells and cytotoxic T-cells. They encounter antigen that is presented to them by macrophages and other cells. This is you alerting one security guard, who then alerts the rest.
* Cytotoxic T-cells recognize antigens presented to them by normal cells, like your live cells. They get the signal that the cell is infected and kill the cell to prevent further spread. This is useful against viruses. This is a suicide- one hostage says that there are ten terrorists with him in the room, so they should just blow it up.
When B-cells encounter its antigen, often presented by a T-helper cell, they will begin producing antibodies, that cling to the target cell (that produces the antigen) and make it easier for it to be eaten by macrophages. This is hiding a transmitter in the felons clothing, so that he can be tracked and weeded out easily. This is the task of Plasma cells. Memory cells will remember the specific antigen, and when they encounter it again they will be activated quicker than the first time around. In other words, he remembers the face and can print out the pictures more quickly.
Because you asked specifically about NK cells: NK cells are like cytotoxic T cells, with one big difference: Tc cells have to be activated to kill a cell, whereas the NK are always active- they have to be stopped by the cell itself, otherwise they kill it. This is a back-up mechanism. Normally a cell, once infected, will tell the Tc cells that he's infected so they can kill them. This is not good for the pathogen inside. So some pathogens (like the herpes virus) will prevent that from happening. But when they do this, they change the outside look of the cell. This is recognized by the NK cell, who then kills the cell anyway. This is like a room in a building with terrorists no longer answering the phone- they're not answering, so the terrorists must be there.
###This omits the principle of MHC molecules, among other things. If you want more detailed info, please go to r/askscience, because then we're entering university level material. | [
"The immune system is a host defense system comprising many biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease. To function properly, an immune system must detect a wide variety of agents, known as pathogens, from viruses to parasitic worms, and distinguish them from the organism's... |
Do electronic devices 'absorb' wifi around them weakening the signal in their immediate vicinity? | In short (but I'll elaborate a little), realistically no. The only way that they would make a difference would be if they were all receiving the energy at the exact same point, which is physically impossible. Power from an antenna (like one found in a Wifi router) is emitted as a function of intensity (W/m^2).
Imagine that the antenna were sending a signal isotropically, that is equally in all directions, that would mean that any sphere at a radius "r" distance away would have the exact same signal strength on every point on it. going back to our intensity, this means that the surface area of the sphere (4*pi*r^2) determines the power being received by the device at any point on the sphere. The signal strength would be the same if you had a device 3m above, left, right, etc away from the router.
However, imagine that you had all 3 devices "on top" of each other, that is at the same exact point in space. Conservation of energy would say that the power being received at that point must be the superposition (sum) of all 3 of them, so the power at that point would have to be divided between them all which would yield the result that you are describing, but if they were even the slightest bit off, they would not have to divide the signal, but would get their own "full strength" signal based on their distance from the router.
Basically, if they were all the same distance away but not at the exact same point in space, they would have the same signal strength. The only thing that would "weaken" their capability would be the bandwidth of the internet and the router's functionality which is another animal that I'm not quite apt enough to speak on. I hope this gets the point of your question though. | [
"So, when it is possible to modulate the signal by changing the material properties dynamically, the modulation of the side lobes is much less than that of the main lobe and so they disappear on demodulation, leaving a cleaner and more private signal.\n",
"The continuing trend towards reduced feature size and vol... |
Could a black hole ever be destroyed by some event? | What about a supernova happening just outside the event horizon of a black hole? Would it just explode into the black hole and vanish or would it push the black hole somehow? | [
"A primordial black hole with an initial mass of around would be completing its evaporation today; a less massive primordial black hole would have already evaporated. In optimistic circumstances, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope satellite, launched in June 2008, might detect experimental evidence for evaporation... |
Is the facebook video (link in comments) that is going around about the causes of the Civil War accurate? If not, what points are most refutable? | **Yes,** it is accurate. Much has been written about this topic, and the consensus is that slavery was the principal cause of the Civil War. As the video states, there were other contributing causes, but slavery was far and away the leading cause for the outbreak of war.
It should be noted that we don't have the original copy of the Alexander Stephens speech quoted at length in the video. The best copy known was printed in the *Savannah Republican* five days after the speech and is not a precise transcription. In 1886, the *Republican*'s copy was reprinted in a collection of speeches regarding the war. You can read two different versions of it [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_0_).
Regardless of the accuracy of the precise details, the speech's message is the same: Slavery was the cornerstone of secession. | [
"The Logic of Violence in Civil War is a book which challenges the conventional view of violence in civil wars as irrational. The main argument is that violence only emerges in those disputed territories, and it is generally driven not by the conflict itself, but by previous rancors and enmities among the populatio... |
what do the people in the bobsleds do when going down the track? | The push at the beginning is extremely important, and being able to sprint very fast while pushing a machine that weighs a few hundred pounds takes some muscle and athleticism. I'm not saying it's the hardest thing in the world, and I’m not saying that these positions are as competitive as some of the bigger sports, but these guys are definitely picked for strength and speed.
I've been told as well that the team can shift their weight on turns and stuff, but I've also heard that they mostly keep their head down and stay still to reduce drag, so there may be other components to being a good bobsledder as well. But these men and women would be mostly there for their explosive power at the start. | [
"In the race's only Fast Forward, both team members had to completely shave each other's heads. They then had to travel to Cát Cò Beach 3, where they had to stand outside of a box in the sand and headbutt a volleyball to each other five times without letting it touch the ground. In this leg's Roadblock, one team me... |
why is classical music titled by a musical note? | It's simply a way to differentiate a given piece without going through the individual catalog numbers. It tells you what key the piece is in.
It should also be said that not all classical music is differentiated that way. | [
"In music, a note is the pitch and duration of a sound, and also its representation in musical notation (♪, ♩). A note can also represent a pitch class. Notes are the building blocks of much written music: discretizations of musical phenomena that facilitate performance, comprehension, and analysis.\n",
"A grace ... |
what actually causes chromosomes to cross over in meiosis? | It's a very complex process, but the ELI5 version: special molecules attach to the chromosomes and break them apart, and the individual pieces of the two chromosomes are close enough together that they can stick to eachother instead of re-sticking to themselves.
Here's a little animation with clay (!) showing what it looks like. _URL_1_
As for *why* the enzymes stick to the DNA and the DNA sticks to eachother, it's all physics at that point. The different atoms in the DNA and enzyme molecules all exert attractive and repulsive forces on eachother based on positive/negative charges, and these favor the formation of certain structures over others. This level of analysis is wayyy over my head, but here's a paper if you're curious:
_URL_0_ | [
"During meiosis in a translocation homozygote, chromosomes segregate normally according to Mendelian principles. Even though the genes have been rearranged during crossover, both haploid sets of chromosomes in the individual have the same rearrangement. As a result, all chromosomes will find a single partner with w... |
when a flashlight is about to die, it becomes very dim. why don’t phones do that same thing? | My dearest five year old,
Great observation! That dimming is a voltage drop. And, as it turns out, yes the batteries in phones (and laptops) do have a similar voltage drop. Now, those batteries are usually more advanced than a headlamp's. But what really does the trick is the power supply! Internal mechanisms make the voltage constant for sensitive equipment. That dimming of the light, for a computer could be a real bad thing. So, the manufacturers do some clever things to make the voltage smooth. | [
"BULLET::::- Dimming: LEDs can very easily be dimmed either by pulse-width modulation or lowering the forward current. This pulse-width modulation is why LED lights, particularly headlights on cars, when viewed on camera or by some people, seem to flash or flicker. This is a type of stroboscopic effect.\n",
"BULL... |
other than efficiency, what does pumping premium gas instead of regular do? | It doesn't improve any of that. You are probably imagining it.
Basically, it's possible to do more aggressive engine design if you only use premium. If your car doesn't say it uses premium (usually sports cars) there is no benefit. | [
"About 9 percent of all gasoline sold in the U.S. in May 2009 was premium grade, according to the Energy Information Administration. \"Consumer Reports\" magazine says, \"If [your owner’s manual] says to use regular fuel, do so—there's no advantage to a higher grade.\" The \"Associated Press\" said premium gas—whic... |
Why can a drag coefficient only be found experimentally? | If you're talking about fluid drag, simple empirical models tend to be used to approximate total drag. An extensive physical treatment of the forces involved in fluid flow around an object is almost always extremely complex. When I say "empirical model" I mean, collecting a bunch of experimental data. Then finding a simple function that fits the data reasonably well in the regime of conditions that you expect in the real world. An example being a simple quadratic equation.
Drag = C1 x (velocity)^2 + C2 x velocity.
So, by definition, a drag coefficient(s) must be determined by fitting your empirical function to the data. Otherwise you're just guessing.
In the last 30 years or so, sophisticated computer simulation software has become available. Using such programs, you can get a good "ballpark" estimate of such coefficients and use that information to fine tune your computer model. This is pretty standard practice these days. Then you can do some small-scale validation testing. | [
"In fluid dynamics, the drag coefficient (commonly denoted as: formula_1, formula_2 or formula_3) is a dimensionless quantity that is used to quantify the drag or resistance of an object in a fluid environment, such as air or water. It is used in the drag equation in which a lower drag coefficient indicates the obj... |
Did ancient Roman women shave their legs, armpits, and/or pubic hair? What was considered the fashion vis-a-vis body hair for women of the ancient world? | Huh. I could have sworn that there was something about this very topic in the FAQ. Seeing as there isn't (or that it's just early in the morning and I'm as blind as a bat), I'll go ahead and write something up on Roman women and their body hair!
Luckily for us, there are a few sources that discuss this, my favourite one being the famed poems of Ovid - which we know today as the *Art of Love*. Also luckily, I happen to have a [solid translation of books 2 and 3 handy](_URL_0_). We'll be looking specifically at book 3, section 4: "Make-up, but in private," which begins with the lovely lines:
> How near I was to warning you, no rankness of the wild goat
under your armpits, no legs bristling with harsh hair!
Considering that *The Art of Love* is essentially a guide for teaching men and women how to get laid, it's got some hilarious stuff in there, if you want to give it a read :) However, this small section already does note that Roman women did distinguish themselves with depilation, and the most common ways they would accomplish this was with either plucking (generally with tweezers, eyebrows were also plucked), razors (not always the most desirable option, because the razors of the time had the unlucky tendency of leaving lots of nicks), and, the biggest one, rubbing your skin with pumice to remove unwanted hair, which honestly also sounds incredibly uncomfortable. Being absolutely fair, I've never done it.
Their artwork just confirms this - some of the following being a bit NSFW (Quite a few of them are of people having sex in different positions).
[Women exercising](_URL_12_), [Leda and the Swan](_URL_14_), [sex](_URL_1_), [more sex](_URL_13_), [even more sex](_URL_6_), [cowgirl](_URL_2_), [topless lady,](_URL_5_) [more exercising](_URL_8_), [back to sex](_URL_10_), [Pompeii has lots of these](_URL_7_), [even threesomes!](_URL_3_), [this one's less erotic, unless you're into flagellation](_URL_4_), [but this one goes back to the fun stuff](_URL_9_). For the record, [the Romans weren't afraid of depicting pubic hair in general.](_URL_11_)
If you click through those, there's a pattern that does make itself clear - there's no body hair on any of the women in question, which does lend itself to the idea of depilation. So the fashion, at least with this snapshot of the end of counting backwards and the beginning of counting forwards, was that women denuded themselves of their body hair.
Sadly, it'll be about 3 hours before I can access my other books on the topic, but feel free to ask questions :) | [
"Flavian and Antonine hairstyles differed greatly between men and women in real life and in the physical appearance of hair for male and female sculptures. In ancient Rome hair was a major determinant of a woman's physical attractiveness, women preferred to be presented as young, and beautiful. Therefore, female sc... |
why do microscopic images of things seem to have no texture? they look like crappy, grey animations. | There are two major forms of microscopes light microscopes and electron microscopes.
Light microscopes generally have to slice things thinly enough to shine a light through the object in order to make out what it is made of and may be stained different colours for contrast. - _URL_0_
Scanning electron microscopes use a beam of electrons to bounce of the surface of the object however since they are not using light all they are three dimensional shapes in black and white but they are extremely magnified - _URL_1_ | [
"An image does not have any structure: it is just a collection of marks on paper, grains in film, or pixels in a bitmap. While such an image is useful, it has some limits. If the image is magnified enough, its artifacts appear. The halftone dots, film grains and pixels become apparent. Images of sharp edges become ... |
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