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When a woman, who has had her womb transplanted, has a child, will the child share her DNA or the DNA of the organ donor? | The womb is also called the [uterus](_URL_1_). This is the organ in which the fetus develops, but it does not contribute to the genetic make up of the child. A fetus is created by the combination of sperm and egg. Eggs are created and stored in the [ovaries](_URL_2_).
The [woman who just successfully had a child after a womb transplant](_URL_0_) had functioning ovaries. The child is genetically hers as an egg from her ovaries (and her husband's sperm) was used to create embryos which were implanted in the transplanted womb (In Vitro fertilization). | [
"A uterine transplant was performed in Saudi Arabia in 2000, from one woman to another, but it did not result in a pregnancy. This advance drew speculation about the possibility of a male receiving a womb transplant, and bearing a child from the transplanted womb.\n",
"Embryo transfer may be used where a woman wh... |
Why did bayonets mostly replace pikes as an anti-cavalry weapon by the end of the 17th century? | The early modern period-- the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century is often referred to as a time of "military revolution", a term associated with Michael Roberts' 1955 lecture of the same name. While Geoffrey Parker and others have raised good points about some of the more exuberant claims, the core of the military revolution argument remains intact-- armies in 1750 looked very different than they did in 1600.
The most immediately obvious of these changes was that the pike had largely disappeared from the battlefield
Some reasons for this change spring to mind as most important:
1. A musket and pike formation has much less firepower than an all musket formation. The musket with bayonet is less capable than the pike, but it's adequate, and "adequate + more firepower" is better than "some pikes with a longer reach and less firepower"
2. The challenges of commanding a combined musket and pike formation like the Spanish *tercio* were very, very complex, requiring a high degree of skill and training. Getting musketeers to firing position was a challenge. The musket and pike formations were the province of skilled professional soldiers, but as armies got bigger and recruited less experienced men, less complex formations were favored.
3. Firearms steadily improved in quality, and armies got better at using them. Starting from the rather finicky, expensive and esoteric arquebus firepower evolved to much more easily manufactured, economical and reliable muskets: firepower got better, while pikes didn't. It was readily understood that firepower was increasing in capability, whereas polearms were little different from Alexander's *sarissa*
4. As firepower increased in efficacy, fewer battles were decided by melee. In the musket and pike formations, the notion had been that firepower was essentially an auxiliary force, a way of harassing and attriting the enemy, but that the decisive blow would be delivered by the collision of forces. 18th and 19th century forces did still come to blows hand to hand, but they typically fired many more rounds and did far more damage to the enemy by firepower before that happened. Many formations broke without ever having reached the enemy, or like Napoleon's Guard at Waterloo, were so bloodied and shaky from losses due to firepower that they had little shock effectiveness left when they finally reached the enemy.
5. As firepower improved, the threat from cavalry diminished. Horse are big targets, and by the end of the 18th century, cavalry was largely unable to break a well formed square-- in the Napoleonic wars, if memory serves, that happened only once, at the skirmish/battle of Garcia Hernandez in 1812. If bayonets and firepower were good enough to ward off cavalry, that was good enough; and they were most of the time. Cavalry had to surprise unprepared infantry, or run down broken formations to be effective-- against prepared infantry, they became progressively less effective in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Sources:
["Doctors of the Military Discipline": Technical Expertise and the Paradigm of the Spanish Soldier in the Early Modern Period](_URL_3_)
[Tactical Evolution in the French Army, 1560-1660](_URL_4_)
[Close Order and Close Quarter: The Culture of Combat in the West](_URL_1_)
[Michael Roberts- The Military Revolution, 1560-1660](_URL_0_)
[The "Military Revolution," 1560-1660--a Myth?](_URL_2_) | [
"The late 17th century saw the decline of the pike in most European armies. This started with the development of the plug bayonet, followed by the socket bayonet. This adds a long blade (up to 2 ft [60 cm]) to the end of the musket, allowing the musket to act as a pike-like weapon when held out with both hands. Alt... |
since there is a color that is all colors combined, is there a scent that is all scents combined, and what would it smell like? | > By color of all colors I'm referring to black since this is the color you see when all waves of color (visible light) are reflected back to your eye.
You mean white, not black. White light is all wavelengths of visible light (or, at least, equal levels of the three you do sense).
Scents are a bit different, since they're a combination of various chemical interactions, and there are far, far more different scent receptors in our noses.
There's also five taste receptors on the tongue, but flavour typically also includes things like temperature, roughness and texture, astringency, moistness, and so on, which all contribute to how something tastes. Just being a combination of all five tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami) isn't going to taste like a single thing the way white light is perceived as white. It's just going to taste like a sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami thing. Kind of like how lemonade is sour and sweet. | [
"The aroma of pure substance can be described as honey-like, sweet, rose, green, grassy and is added to fragrances to impart hyacinth, narcissi, or rose nuances. For similar reasons the compound can sometimes be found in flavored cigarettes and beverages.\n",
"Generally molecules meeting this specification have m... |
the process of photo restoration | Cracks and folds are removed by carefully hiding them, either hand-painting over them, or simply copying nearby textures over them. Missing parts are painted.
Faded parts of the foto are simply restored by taking the color that are present, and amplifying them (like turning up the volume).
There are tools in the popular photo editing software Photoshop that help with this (healing brush, clone stamp, and various adjustment layers) | [
"Digital photograph restoration is the practice of restoring the appearance of a digital copy of a physical photograph which has been damaged by natural, man made, or environmental causes or simply affected by age or neglect.\n",
"Digital photograph restoration uses a variety of image editing techniques to remove... |
how do bacteria think? | There is a grievous, fundamental misunderstanding of biology here. I don't know what you think thoughts are, but they are really not at all related to the immune system, performing "actions," or bacteria.
Let's start with a really simple chemical reaction. When you mix baking soda and vinegar, it makes the classic science fair volcano. Mixing these two chemicals causes foam to form. There are no thoughts related to this process. It just happens, like how ice melts or things fall down when you let go of them.
Living things are like that too, only *way* more complicated. Lots of bacteria have genes that, when they enter a potential host, are turned on. The genes can produce molecules that do things like help the bacteria stick to your own cells to infect them, or physically form a shield around it so your immune system can't reach them. There's no thought involved. | [
"Bacteria can use flagella in different ways to generate different kinds of movement. Many bacteria (such as \"E. coli\") have two distinct modes of movement: forward movement (swimming) and tumbling. The tumbling allows them to reorient and makes their movement a three-dimensional random walk. Bacterial species di... |
does the weather/environment determine the development of our personality? | [From John Grohol, PSY.D](_URL_0_): I was browsing a blog the other day and saw an undated (recent?) entry suggesting that research shows that “weather has little effect on our mood.” The entry relied heavily on a recent study (Denissen et al., 2008) that shows that although a correlation between mood and weather does exist, it’s a small one (not nearly as large as conventional wisdom might suggest). The entry quotes almost exclusively and entirely from the one study.
I’m familiar with this area of research, so I found the entry’s conclusions a little simplistic and not really doing justice to this topic. There’s a fair amount of research in this area (more than the 3 or 4 studies mentioned in the blog), and I think the overall preponderance of evidence suggests that weather can have more than just a “little effect” on your mood.
Some previous research confirms the blog entry’s conclusion that weather may have little effect on our moods. For instance, Hardt & Gerbershagen (1999) looked at 3,000 chronic pain patients who came to a hospital over a 5-year period. The researchers had patients fill out a depression questionnaire, and then analyzed the results. They found no correlation between depression and the time of the year, nor the amount of daily hours of sunshine. But the researchers only examined depression, and didn’t measure how much time subjects spent outside (a factor that some have suggested might influence how much the weather impacts us).
Other research paints a very different picture.
Howard and Hoffman (1984) had 24 college students keep track of their mood (by filling out a mood questionnaire) over 11 consecutive days. They found a significant effect on mood correlated with the weather, especially with regards to humidity (a component of weather not always measured):
Humidity, temperature, and hours of sunshine had the greatest effect on mood. High levels of humidity lowered scores on concentration while increasing reports of sleepiness. Rising temperatures lowered anxiety and skepticism mood scores. [...]
The number of hours of sunshine was found to predict optimism scores significantly. As the number of hours of sunshine increased, optimism scores also increased. [...]
Mood scores on the depression and anxiety scales were not predicted by any weather variable.
Another study by Sanders and Brizzolara (1982) on 30 college students also found similar findings — that high humidity was a predictor for lack of vigor, elation, and affection.
But you may dismiss these studies as small, or on unrepresentative samples (college students). You’d have a harder time making that argument against Faust et al.’s (1974) study on 16,000 students in Basle City, Switzerland. Although not the most robust study designed, the researchers nonetheless found that nearly one-third of the girls and one fifth of the boys responded negatively to certain weather conditions. Symptoms reported included poor sleep, irritability, and dysphoric (depressed) mood.
If you noticed that higher humidity is associated with certain mood states, you won’t be surprised to hear there is also a good body of research that has investigated the link between heat and different types of human behavior, especially aggression (see, for example, Rotton & Cohn, 2004; Cohn & Rotton, 2005; Anderson, 1987; etc.). While there’s some debate as to how strong a relationship exists between heat and violence, this is a relationship that been undergoing research since the 1970s. At this point, it’s not in question whether a link exists, just how strong and what the relationship exactly looks like (and whether it’s mediated by other factors, like time of day).
The Weather Can Affect You Negatively and Positively
Keller and his colleagues (2005) examined 605 participants responses in three separate studies to examine the connection between mood states, a person’s thinking and the weather. They found that:
[...P]leasant weather (higher temperature or barometric pressure) was related to higher mood, better memory, and ‘‘broadened’’ cognitive style during the spring as time spent outside increased. The same relationships between mood and weather were not observed during other times of year, and indeed hotter weather was associated with lower mood in the summer.
These results are consistent with findings on seasonal affective disorder, and suggest that pleasant weather improves mood and broadens cognition in the spring because people have been deprived of such weather during the winter.
So while Denissen et al. (2008) found no general ability for the weather itself to lift us into a more positive mood (contrary to both Howard & Hoffman and Keller’s findings above), the researchers did find that the weather can impact our moods negatively. And while that effect in the present study was small, it confirms the same effect found in a multitude of other studies (some of which are mentioned above).
Another way to look at it is that Denissen and colleagues confirmed prior research that showed that people’s moods and emotions can definitely be affected by the weather. The strength of that relationship varies from person to person. But a study’s design has a lot to do with trying to find this relationship in the data. And while Denissen’s design was good, it wasn’t foolproof. Its problems include the over-representation of women in the sample (89%), suggesting a skewed and biased sample, and the response rate, with participants submitting on average half the number of surveys needed by the study’s design. In other words, the data may not be the most robust in the world either (despite the large sample size).
So, sorry, yes, weather does appear to impact our moods. And that effect may become serious. Look no further for evidence of this than the very real condition called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD is characterized by feelings of sadness and depression that occur in the winter months when the temperatures drop and the days grow short. This specific form of depression is often associated with excessive eating or sleeping and weight gain. Women are twice to three times more likely to suffer from the winter blues than men. If SAD is merely a “culturally transmitted idea” (as the blog quotes the researchers as suggesting), then so is every mental disorder to one extent or another.
The new research provides some contradictory data to previous findings. And when such discrepancies arise, the answer is not to conclude the matter settled, but to go and conduct more research. So what Denissen’s study really shows is that more research is needed to better determine the strength of the link, and whether it affects people in different geographical regions (and countries).
So no, you’re not crazy if you think your mood is affected by the weather. Nearly 40 years of research suggests there’s a strong link. And one that, in some people, can lead to significant seasonal problems. | [
"In the case of personality traits, non-shared environmental effects are often found to out-weigh shared environmental effects. That is, environmental effects that are typically thought to be life-shaping (such as family life) may have less of an impact than non-shared effects, which are harder to identify. One pos... |
How important was the transfer of equipment/capital that the allies gave to the USSR during World War 2? Was the USSR dependent on it? | Hello!
Another related question, how much did the supply of Allied apparel affect the combat strength of the Soviet army during the continuation war against Finland? I've heard anecdotes that one of the key reasons Finland was forced into an armistice was that the useful equipment used in the continuation war was primarily US -supplied military gear | [
"Stalin noted in 1944, that two-thirds of Soviet heavy industry had been built with the help of the United States, and the remaining one-third, with the help from other Western nations such as Great Britain and Canada. The massive transfer of equipment and skilled personnel from occupied territories helped further ... |
What advancements allowed aerial warfare to evolve from triplanes to precision drones within a century? | You may want to be more specific - countless technological advancements have contributed to the kind of combat aircraft we see today. If we ignore electronics (which nowadays are arguably the most important part of combat aircraft design) and armament, the biggest areas of improvement are engines and propulsion, aerodynamic design, and materials. I'll try to do a broad overview of things - let me know if there's anything specific you want me to elaborate on.
& #x200B;
The triplanes made famous in WW1 - the Sopwith Triplane and Fokker Dr.I - were alarmingly simple aircraft. They were largely made of canvas stretched over a wood frame with wires spanning around the aircraft to provide structural support to critical areas like the wings. Structural support would be the driving reason behind the biplane and triplane layouts, as the wings could be braced off of eachother with wires and struts. Airfoils - the cross-section of the wing - were very rudimentary, often consisting of just a single layer of canvas stretched over the top of an airfoil-shaped wood frame. Engines were perhaps the most terrifying feature of these designs - the rotary engines popular during WW1 were mounted in such a way that they spun with the propeller. Combined with the very light construction of the airframe, the several hundred pounds of engine spinning at the same speed as the propeller on the front of the plane led to dangerous gyroscopic effects that made the aircraft very difficult to control at low speeds. On the topic of the propulsion, propellers of the time were simple fixed-pitch propellers and almost always two-bladed.
& #x200B;
Going forward, every aspect of these aircraft would be improved upon. Better structural design and materials would allow for simpler biplane structures with fewer wires and struts or even monoplane designs if the wings were made thick enough. New materials contributed to this, particularly the aluminum alloy known as Duralumin, which would make the use of metal in aircraft structures feasible. The first all-metal aircraft - the Junkers J I - appeared during WW1 and in fact was a monoplane, but metal construction would catch on more commonly by replacing the wood structure underneath the canvas with metal tubing. All-metal designs would become the norm during WW2, although control surfaces often remained canvas-covered frames even in otherwise all-metal designs. Aerodynamic design massively improved, with groups like NACA (predecessor to America's NASA) doing huge amounts of research in the design of airfoils, engine cowlings, and various other aerodynamic features. New developments in propulsion would allow engineers to make the most of these new aerodynamic developments. Through the interwar period, engines became significantly more powerful and, perhaps more critically, significantly more reliable. During WW1 and the early interwar period, it was common for large multi-engined aircraft to have the engines serviceable in flight (see many of the Riesenflugzeug Germany used in WW1). Come WW2, however, such a feature is unheard of on aircraft - engines were reliable enough for even long endurance flights. Whereas the Fokker Dr.I mounted a 110 hp rotary engine in 1917 and the one of the premier aircraft engines at the end of the war was the American 400hp Liberty engine, fighter engines by 1939 were of the 1,000 hp class - the DB 601, Rolls-Royce Merlin, and Hispano-Suiza 12Y. By the end of the war, engines like the Wasp Major were pushing to nearly 4,000 hp. Just as important as added engine power was improved propeller design. Variable-pitch propellers would become commonplace in the interwar period, allowing the pitch of the propeller to be tailored to factors like the speed of the aircraft, air density, and RPM of the propeller. The ultimate result of these developments in propulsion was that aircraft were able to become faster and - more significantly - heavier.
& #x200B;
Once we get to the postwar era, some new factors become important. The increasing speed of aircraft during WW2 had seen aircraft pushing up against supersonic flight at the extremes of their performance, but it wouldn't be until after WW2 that engineers were really capable of designing for transonic flight. The theory of supersonic flight had largely been figured out during the interwar period, but the kind of understanding of transonic flight necessary for supersonic aircraft wasn't developed until after WW2. Developments like swept wings, conically-cambered delta wings, and area-ruling would further contribute to high-speed flight, and would have applications outside of supersonic aircraft (as we see with modern airliners). New propulsion also drastically changed flight profiles. Both piston engines and turbines lose power as altitude increases, but turbines proved more suited to high altitudes thanks to their greater power/thrust output. Jet engines replaced propellers for most applications, and where propellers remained, they were most often replaced by turoprops - effectively a propeller powered by a jet turbine - to provide a more powerful powerplant in a more compact and lighter package.
& #x200B;
From there, however, surprisingly little has changed in the grand scheme of things. Most of the advances for several decades have been the introduction finite-element-analysis using supercomputers for aerodynamic analysis (alongside wind tunnels), new materials improving structures and powerplants, and electronics (both hardware and software) improving capabilities of airframes. | [
"Drones have been around since the beginning of the 21st century. While popular in recreational settings though the use of remote control airplanes in the 1970s and 1980s, drones gained in popularity during military war campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though the use of drones has been controversial at times, esp... |
What would happen if a nuclear weapon was detonated next to a nuclear power plant or next to another nuclear weapon? | The only real difference would be the increased fallout and radiation from the spread of radioactive material during the explosion. The other material wouldn't achieve the critical pressures/temperatures required to set off a chain reaction and it would just get blown into the atmosphere by the blast. | [
"It is impossible for a nuclear power plant to undergo a nuclear chain reaction that results in an explosion of power comparable with a nuclear weapon, but even low-powered explosions due to uncontrolled chain reactions, that would be considered \"fizzles\" in a bomb, may still cause considerable damage and meltdow... |
Is time quantized on extremely small (quantum) scales? | As far as we know, and according to our current models, time is continuous. There are some proposed models of quantum gravity where time is quantized at very small scales, like around the Planck scale, but we lack the experimental accuracy needed to access those scales, so as of now we can't know for sure. | [
"In special scale relativity, similar unreachable observational scales are proposed, the Planck length scale (\"l\") and the Planck time scale (\"t\"). Dilations are bounded by \"l\" and \"t\", which means that we can divide spatial or temporal intervals without end, but they will always be superior to Planck's len... |
why does the air from my table fan feel cold? | Sweat can be a factor (evaporation cools you, of course).
However, more commonly, it's because the air is far below your body temperature, so the more air per minute you're exposed to, the more cooling effect there is. Your body doesn't perceive external temperature, per se, but the rate and direction of heat exchange with the environment.
Air below body temperature then will always cool you. Air above body temperature will still cool you because of evaporation and sweat. However, air with a wet bulb temperature (that's basically the temperature you can reach with sweating) near body temperature is eventually fatal and the more it flows the faster you die. | [
"While fans are often used to cool people, they do not actually cool air (electric fans may warm it slightly due to the warming of their motors), but work by evaporative cooling of sweat and increased heat convection into the surrounding air due to the airflow from the fans. Thus, fans may become ineffective at coo... |
paying a copay instead of full deductible. | Your policy will tell you when the copay applies, and when the deductible applies. You need to check there, as almost every policy is different.
With that said, typically things like normal visits (annual physicals, OB/GYN visits, etc.) only require the copay, while unscheduled emergency count against your deductible. | [
"A copayment or copay is a fixed amount for a covered service, paid by a patient to the provider of service before receiving the service. It may be defined in an insurance policy and paid by an insured person each time a medical service is accessed. It is technically a form of coinsurance, but is defined differentl... |
In Battlefield 1 the military phonetic alphabet is quite a bit differnt as we know it today (Apples instead of Alpha, Butter instead of Bravo, etc). When was it changed into what it is today? Why was it changed? Or does Battlefield's version have no basis on historical reality? | Yes, this is based in history. The British went through numerous versions of the phonetic alphabet and during the WWI period, it was indeed Apples, Butter, Charlie, Duff, etc. [Tables here](_URL_0_)
Due to issues with differences in the phonetic alphabet, and difficulty in pronouncing certain words, after WW2, the newly formed International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) drafted up a new phonetic alphabet, which is frequently called the NATO alphabet as NATO was one of the first major organizations to adopt it in full for all of its militaries. [History here from ICAO](_URL_1_) | [
"The Allied military phonetic spelling alphabets prescribe the words that are used to represent each letter of the alphabet, when spelling other words out loud, letter-by-letter, and how the spelling words should be pronounced. They are not a \"phonetic alphabet\" in the sense in which that term is used in phonetic... |
what exactly do the brackets mean when used in interviews like this: "[we want to] change social attitudes toward downloading." | I often see it used to add words the speaker left out. A sentence like "They have a right to happiness" doesn't confer the idea of the speaker without more context so it might be quoted in print as "[Gays] have the right to happiness". It's used to show added or substituted words for clarity. When used properly it will add understanding without changing the intent of the statement. | [
"The process can isolate the words and phrases used most frequently within a given time period, as well as indicate whether usage is trending up or down. This information is useful for supervisors, analysts, and others in an organization to spot changes in consumer behavior and take action to reduce call volumes—an... |
When did Europeans figure out that certain birds were migratory and where did they think the birds migrated to? Where did they believe the birds went in winter before that? | Pliny the Elder in Natural History seems well aware of bird migration in the first century AD. He claims cranes fly from the east of India:
> The tracts over which they travel must be immense, if we only consider that they come all the way from the Eastern Sea.
But he doesn’t know where storks come from:
> Up to the present time it has not been ascertained from what place the storks come, or whither they go when they leave us. There can be no doubt but that, like the cranes, they come from a very great distance, the cranes being our winter, the storks our summer, guests.
He thinks swallows don’t migrate that far:
> The swallow, the only bird that is carnivorous among those which have not hooked talons, takes its departure also during the winter months; but it only goes to neighbouring countries, seeking sunny retreats there on the mountain sides; sometimes they have been found in such spots bare and quite unfledged.
…and claims the thrush winters in the north, not the south:
> they are often to be seen in places where they seek their food during the winter: hence it is that in winter, more especially, the thrush is so often to be seen in Germany.
Pliny also points out that geese and swans migrate, and interestingly even knows the V-formation makes for easier flying.
> The flocks, forming a point, move along with great impetus, much, indeed, after the manner of our Liburnian beaked galleys; and it is by doing so that they are enabled to cleave the air more easily than if they presented to it a broad front. The flight gradually enlarges in the rear, much in the form of a wedge, presenting a vast surface to the breeze, as it impels them onward; those that follow place their necks on those that go before, while the leading birds, as they become weary, fall to the rear.
Pliny actually categorises some birds on their migration, or non-migration, which you can see in [Book X](_URL_0_).
| [
"This ' was crucial in understanding the migration of European birds. Before migration was understood, people had no explanation for the sudden annual disappearance of birds like the white stork and barn swallow. Some theories of the time held that they turned into mice, or hibernated at the bottom of the sea durin... |
how does a plant 'know' how old it is? | It doesn't. Plants don't age the way animals do. They show symptoms of aging as their structure becomes too large and woody to carry out its functions, but their growing cells are no older now than they were when it first sprouted. There are plants that have been cloning themselves for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, and other plants that could live forever unless something kills them. | [
"\"Dioscorea chouardii\" is related to the yam and grows from a tuber hidden in the rock fissure. From this it sends out a shoot each year which withers away in the autumn. The shoot leaves a scar on the tuber, which makes it possible to estimate the age of the plant from the number of scars; the oldest plants are ... |
different types of alcohol. i just got a job at a duty free, and i need a crash course quick! | You've got your main spirits:
Vodka - Clear colourless liquid, normally around 37% alcohol(in the UK at least). Made from fermented grains or potato. Smells like well alcohol. Normally mixed with various sodas or drunk straight(usually very cold). Can be flavoured with various sweet tastes like fruits or caramel.
Gin - Again clear and colourless, smells like flowers. Made from juniper berries. Normally mixed with soda. Again around 37%.
Rum - Made from fermented sugar cane. Can be white, spiced or dark. Bacardi is a common white rum. Captain Morgans is a common spiced rum but they also do a dark rum(and probably a white version too). Mixed with various sodas similar to vodka and again 37%
Whisky/Whiskey - Ok things get tricky, it's easier to split these into 2 groups; Bourbon and Scotch(I hate to call it that as a Scottish person but its easier for explanation purposes). Bourbon is generally American whiskeys made from a corn mash; similar to Jack Daniels or Old Turkey. Its very sweet and normally drunk straight or with coke.
Scotch is more european, the most common types are Scottish Whisky or Irish Whiskey(but you get them from everywhere including America). This is made from malted barley, a single casket produces a single malt ie 1 type of barley grain used. If you blend a few different types together you get a blended malt. Either way it's normally drunk straight, with a bit of ice or a splash of water but never mixed with soda! A single malt tastes a lot more harsh where as a blend is normally less so. These are normally a lot higher percentage of alcohol. Colour wise they're all most commonly golden brown similar to a spiced rum.
Wine - 3 main types; Red, Rose and White. Made from fermented grapes, I think the colour comes from the grape type but I may be wrong. Drunk straight or as a spritzer, Normally around 12%. Red wine is a lot deeper and complex in taste whereas white wines are fruitier and lighter. Come from all over the world big areas though are Italy, France, South Africa, Australia and California. Champagne is a special type of white wine that is fizzy, as far as the EU goes this can only be made in the Champagne region of France to be called such otherwise it's fizzy wine, Cava is a similar wine from Spain. I don't think the same restrictions apply in the US though.
My suggestion to you would be to go to a bar and start trying things particularly rums, gins and vodkas. | [
"When 40–70% of the patients in an accident and emergency department (AED) are there because of alcohol-related issues, it is useful for the staff of the AED to determine which of them are hazardous drinkers so that they can treat the underlying cause and offer brief advice which may reduce the health impact of alc... |
how does a park like disneyland know when everyone has left the park. | They actually have an after hours crew of around 600 that maintain the park. If someone were left behind, they'd be caught. | [
"According to modern legend, Walt Disney was bothered by the sight of a cowboy walking through California Disneyland's Tomorrowland en route to his post in Frontierland. He felt that such a sight was jarring, and detracted from the guest experience. Since the California Disneyland was small, such a tunnel system co... |
What was the first democracy where over 50% of the population could vote? | Do you mean "where over 50% of the adult population could vote"?
Since in most democracies approximately half the adult population are women, your question can be re-phrased as which democracy first had both, broad adult suffrage and women voters? That would be the British colony of New Zealand in 1893, followed by the colony of South Australia in 1894 and then the Commonwealth of Australia (no longer a colony) in 1903. | [
"The earliest known direct democracy is said to be the Athenian democracy in the 5th century BC, although it was not an inclusive democracy: women, foreigners, and slaves were excluded from it. The main bodies in the Athenian democracy were the assembly, composed of male citizens; the boulê, composed of 500 citizen... |
What of the era of Biblical Judges is corroborated by archeological or textual evidence? | The historical accuracy of events portrayed in the Bible change depending on the books and division of the Bible. Generally, the farther back in the past a Biblical story takes place, the more likely it is the details of the story are inaccurate if the story has any basis in history at all. For example, the invasion of Jerusalem by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II in 597 BC is an unquestioned historic fact, it is an event recounted throughout several books in the Hebrew Bible, as well as being chronicled by the Babylonians themselves. Whereas the events in the Torah/Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) are largely agreed to have not happened in the way the Bible describes them. What is worth noting, however, is that though the stories of the Pentateuch did not happen as they are portrayed, it is likely that many of the stories of the Pentateuch are mythologized accounts loosely based off of real world events. For example, there is no archaeological evidence for the figure Abraham, Abraham’s journey, though, is described in Genesis as a journey from Mesopotamia (“Ur of the Chaldeans”) to the land of Canaan. Archaeological evidence has shown similar migration patterns among the Amorites, who likewise migrated from Mesopotamia to Canaan. It is theorized the Biblical authors had some kind of awareness to these migration patterns, but that Abraham was a later edition to the story.
The Book of Judges is placed in the Historical Books section of the Christian Old Testament (The Historical Books are the books from Joshua to Esther, in the Hebrew Bible/TaNaKh, Judges is placed within the Nevi'im (prophetic books)) Judges is a continuation of the narrative presented in Joshua. The description of the Israelites under Joshua taking over Canaan has been under great academic skepticism. Current archaeological evidence suggests that rather than the Israelites taking over Canaan by force, they integrated into the land over the span of many generations. If Joshua is like Genesis in that the stories presented often contain mythologized accounts of history, then it is possible the conquest of Canaan as described in Joshua may be dramatized renditions of small scale revolts that sporadically happened during the transition of the Canaanites controlling the land to the Israelites.
Several of the kings described in 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles have been identified as real figures (such as Omri of Israel, Josiah of Judah, and Zedekiah of Judah), but the existence of the earlier kings (such as in 1 Kings, and especially in 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel) is much more controversial. The books of Samuel describe Israel as being a united monarchy from Syria to Edom (Edom being south of Jerusalem). Apart from the Hebrew Bible, however, there are no major sources of the United Kingdom of Israel, what has been theorized is that David, if he existed, rather than being the king of all Israel, was likely a tribal king who controlled a much smaller portion of land than the dimensions given in the Biblical account. It has been speculated that the story of David was promoted by later kings of Judah to validate their rule (the kings of Judah saw themselves as being part of the “House of David”), and to potentially control the northern Kingdom of Israel as David, after all, was said to have ruled all Israel as well as what was then Judah.
Much like the account of the first kings of Israel, the Book of Judges presents Israel as a sort of unity. Whenever a judge is described, they are never described as judging the specific tribe they are from, but Israel, in the story of Othniel becoming the first judge of Israel, it is stated “and he \[Othniel\] judged Israel” (Judges 3:10, NRSV). The judges period appears to serve as a sort of prologue as to why Israel was ruled by kings, the judges are contrasted by kings in a few ways
1. The judges are chosen by God: Whenever a dynasty in Israel lost popularity with the populous, the books of Kings and Chronicles tells of how they would be overthrown, and a new dynasty of kings would take over. The judges are described as being determined not by overthrowing the current ruler, or gaining popularity, but by being men (and women, as Deborah was among the judges named) handpicked by God Himself.
2. The judges did not rule by hereditary rule: The judges described did not belong in the same family as each other, Judges portrays God as choosing who should judge Israel not based on familial ties and lineages, but by those God sees as worthy to judge.
1 Samuel tells of the end of the period of judges with the abdication of Samuel the final judge of Israel, and the coronation of Saul the first king of Israel. The kings are contrasted with the judges, the judges are depicted as righteous leaders chosen by God, whereas several of the kings of Judah and all of the kings of Northern Israel are described as sinful. Again, if the figures in Judges were based on actual historical figures, it is unlikely they would have ruled the whole land of Canaan as the Book of Judges implies, especially when one considers the commonly accepted time period the Israelites entered Canaan (circa 1250 BC) and compare it to when Judges would have taken place when using Biblical chronology (circa 1500-1000 BC).
Apologies if much of my answer seems speculative, though scholars are pretty much certain that the events in the Pentateuch did not happen in the way the Bible describes it, the time period between the judges and kings of Israel is much more uncertain, and is hotly debated.
Sources
“ABC 5 (Jerusalem Chronicle).” *Livius*, 26 July 2017, [_URL_4_](_URL_4_).
“Archeology of the Hebrew Bible.” *PBS*, Public Broadcasting Service, 18 Nov. 2008, [_URL_3_](_URL_3_).
Astle, Cynthia. “Is There Archaeological Evidence About the Story of Abraham?” *Learn Religions*, Learn Religions, 4 May 2019, [_URL_1_](_URL_1_).
Dever, William G. “Archaeology and the Israelite 'Conquest'.” *W.Dever Archaelogy & Conquest ABD*, [_URL_5_](_URL_0_).
“The City of David and Solomon.” *David and Solomon: Myth or Reality*, [_URL_6_](_URL_6_).
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Canaan.” *Encyclopædia Britannica*, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 11 Oct. 2019, [_URL_2_](_URL_2_). | [
"Independent, datable historical confirmation of Biblical events begins during the era of the first Jewish kings. With the advent of biblical criticism in the 19th century, the events before this period came to be disputed. Little interest in questioning the biblical chronology existed before then, but came with th... |
why not everybody is capable of moving their ears and other body parts? | Some of it is due to lack of practice and realizing you can. Physical therapy for instance helps people locate weakened or atrophied muscles using electrical stimulation so you can find them and learn to use them again.
So for those that can raise a single eyebrow or whatnot, it comes with practice.
For something like wiggling your ears, not everyone can do that. The muscles responsible for that are vestigial in many people, from the time that we could move our ears in response to sound. They did experiments highlighting that sound does activate those muscles in everyone, but very few could actually move their ears with said muscles, because they usually just don't work. I'm sure there are a few other muscles that are similar as far as genetics go. | [
"The ears of a macaque monkey and most other monkeys have far more developed muscles than those of humans, and therefore have the capability to move their ears to better hear potential threats. Humans and other primates such as the orangutan and chimpanzee however have ear muscles that are minimally developed and n... |
How did Imperial Germany Treat its Minorities? | I'm mostly familiar with things from the minority-side of things, not the German side. But Imperial Germany did emancipate its Jews, giving them political rights, along with other countries during this era. This (along with the enlightenment) produced new religious movements in Judaism, particularly the Reform movement. The result of this was that Jews tried to re-identify themselves as "Germans of the Mosaic faith" (the same nationality and ethnicity as their neighbors, but a different religion). This meant that Jews in Imperial Germany were meaningfully participating in German society, which at the time was fairly new in Europe (but was occurring at roughly the same time in Europe). German Jews started to be more German culturally, and started replacing Western Yiddish with High German. [This guy](_URL_1_) is a good example of a proponent of this.
I really don't know to what extent this was encouraged by the German government, but given that they emancipated the Jews I imagine it was. So they essentially wanted to incorporate the Jews into being a sub-grouping of Germans, rather than a group on their own. Of course, the pendulum ultimately swung the other way, and in the early 1900s the dualling philosophies among the Jewish thinkers were whether Jews ought to be part of nationalist movements (adopting the national identity of their countries of residence. Note that non-Jewish nationalists sometimes opposed this) or develop a Jewish nationalist movement, namely Zionism. Various events and convincing writers caused the latter to become dominant in the end, but in Imperial Germany the two views were very much both present, with the former being dominant.
edit: See [here](_URL_2_) and [here](_URL_0_) for sources and more information | [
"\"Volksdeutsche\" (ethnic Germans) topped the list as a category. They comprised people without German citizenship but of German ancestry living outside Germany (unlike German expatriates). Though \"Volksdeutsche\" did not hold German citizenship, the strengthening and development of ethnic German communities thro... |
why is ford's stock (~$30) significantly cheaper than nissan's stock (~$1,100)? | Prices of individual shares are not as relevant as the overall market cap of the company. Share prices can be driven downward by having stock splits, which most companies do when the per share price becomes high. | [
"According to the \"Forbes\" magazine, Ford was the 371st richest person in the United States in 2013, with an approximate net worth of $1.4 billion. He reportedly owned in Ford Motor Company: 6.7 million shares of Class B stock and 26.3 million common shares; making him the largest single shareholder.\n",
"In 20... |
What discoveries in the natural sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology) have had evident and dramatic impacts on the course of history? | In physics I would note electricity, and electromagnetic theory (which allows radio) is perhaps a separate discovery. The steam engine is also an obvious one, or if you prefer theory you could say thermodynamics - but the applications side was clearly first here. I guess this could also be considered engineering, as could the internal combustion engine, which also shades into chemistry. Going back into prehistory, you have the lever! Or, more generally, mechanical advantage, which allows the spear thrower, the bow, the crossbow, and the catapult.
Chemistry: Gunpowder is perhaps debatable, being discovered well before modern science per se. Antibiotics, although you could consider it biology. Plastics, oh boy. Condoms without latex really suck.
Biology: Genetic engineering - take your pick: The old-fashioned kind with crossbreeding and culling that created all the modern cereals and cattle breeds, or the kind that people get hysterical about that uses pipettes. The latter is perhaps mostly a false alarm so far. The Pill! (Possibly chemistry?) Machine guns are not really practical without smokeless powder - the residue of black powder will foul it very quickly - but I don't know if this gives you the social change you want; at any rate it's pretty indirect. | [
"Historically, the main discoveries were in the fields of endocrinology and physiology. The current research areas are wider and include Neurosciences, Biology of Reproduction, Experimental Oncology and Immunology. Results are published in journals of international recognition, thus demonstrating the level of excel... |
how a double-blind study works, and why it is considered so reliable | Double-blind studies are usually used in medicine. They are to control for the placebo effect.
Let's say you have a new drug and you want to test how well it treats a disease. So, you get a whole bunch of patients with that disease. You give half of them the new drug and half of them a sugar pill (you could also give them the old drug if you want to compare against that instead). The patient doesn't know which pill they got, so that's the first blind. The second blind is that the doctor that gave them the pill also doesn't know which pill they got.
The reason for the second blind is that the doctor's actions might influence the patient. So, if neither the patient nor the doctor know whether they got the new drug or not you can be sure that any effects are from the drug itself and not from the placebo effect. | [
"A double-blind study with only objective measures is less likely to be biased to support a given conclusion. However, the researchers or the sponsors still have opportunities to skew the results by discarding or ignoring undesirable data, qualitatively characterizing the results, and ultimately deciding whether to... |
Why is the fine structure constant called "fine structure"? | Atomic spectra have gross, fine and hyperfine structure.
The gross structure corresponds to the energy levels which result from non-relativistic solutions to the Schrodinger equation, with no allowance for the effects of electron spin.
Fine structure results from taking account of relativistic effects, and of interactions between electron spin and orbital angular momentum. This has the effect of splitting what would otherwise be single energy levels into closely spaced ones. It is the fact that these levels - and hence the resulting spectral lines - are closely spaced that leads to it being referred to as fine structure.
Hyperfine structure is an even smaller effect due to interactions with the nucleus.
The fine structure constant was given that name because it appears in the equations for calculating the size of fine structure corrections. | [
"In physics, the fine-structure constant, also known as Sommerfeld's constant, commonly denoted by (the Greek letter \"alpha\"), is a dimensionless physical constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles. It is related to the elementary charge , which ch... |
What happens when a charged particle moves faster than the speed of light in a material? (Cherenkov radiation) | > What is going on at the atomic level in the material that causes this?
The electric field of the charged particle distorts the atoms. When the atoms relax back to equilibrium the excess energy of the disruption is released as photons.
> What happens if the particle is not charged?
Uncharged molecules won't disrupt atoms.
> How fast does the charged particle slow down to sub-luminal speeds?
It depends on how how much kinetic energy they start with. The rule of thumb is that muons loose 2 MeV/cm in water. Electrons loose energy considerably faster. | [
"It is possible for a particle to travel through a medium faster than the phase velocity of light in that medium (but still slower than \"c\"). When a charged particle does that in a dielectric material, the electromagnetic equivalent of a shock wave, known as Cherenkov radiation, is emitted.\n",
"When a charged ... |
How did Tobacco come to Japan in the 19th century? | It isn't known exactly how tobacco first came to Japan. In the mid-to-late 16th century, tobacco was spreading in East Asia and South-East Asia, probably through multiple routes: Portuguese sailors/traders from Europe or Brazil, Dutch sailors/traders, Spanish sailors/traders from Mexico and the Philippines, and Arab and Indian sailors/traders. By one or more (and most likely it was through multiple routes), tobacco was known around the East and SE Asian maritime world in the 16th century. But the early 16th century it was being grown in China and Japan.
The 16th century also saw the rise of the tea ceremony in Japan. Tea already had a long history in Japan, having been introduced from China and grown in Japan in the early 9th century. The classic tea of the tea ceremony, made with *matcha* powder, arrived in China in the 12th century, and was drunk by Buddhist priests. It spread to the samurai class in the 13th century, and was popular in the 14th century. The tea ceremony, as opposed to merely drinking tea, was assuming a recognisably modern form in the 16th century, brought into this shape by the first recognised tea masters. Perhaps the most famous and influential of these tea masters was Rikyū, who smoked, and might have introduced smoking tobacco to the tea ceremony. Smoking as part of the tea ceremony did help spread smoking in cultured elite circles in Japan. If Rikyū was responsible, the inclusion of smoking in the tea ceremony took place before his death in 1591.
Japan was already exporting tobacco to SE Asia by 1634, so production was well-established by then.
For a brief summary of the introduction of tobacco to Japan, see
* Barnabas Tatsuya Suzuki, "Tobacco culture in Japan", pp 76-83 in Sander L. Gilman and Zhou Xun, *Smoke: A Global History of Smoking*, Reaktion, 2004. Further chapters discuss Edo Period smoking in Japan, and also modern Japan.
There is also discussion of the early history of tobacco in East Asia in
* Benedict, Carol, *Golden-Silk Smoke: A History of Tobacco in China, 1550-2010*, University of California Press, 2011.
In both of these books, one thing that stands out is that we don't know much about the details of the introduction of tobacco in either Japan or China. By the time we have good evidence, it's already there, and being smoked. | [
"Tobacco has been known in Japan since the 1570s at the earliest. By the early 17th century, kiseru had become popular enough to even be mentioned in some Buddhist textbooks for children. The kiseru evolved along with the equipment and use of incense associated with the Japanese incense ceremony: kōdō:\n",
"After... |
why are there still "living fossils that have barely evolved in 100s of millions of years? | If there's a species is still quite a good fit for their environment and no string of beneficial mutations come up to eventually mold a new species, the species just sort of stays the same. | [
"Not every transitional form appears in the fossil record, because the fossil record is not complete. Organisms are only rarely preserved as fossils in the best of circumstances, and only a fraction of such fossils have been discovered. Paleontologist Donald Prothero noted that this is illustrated by the fact that ... |
Are there any animals that can see microwaves? | the wavelength of microwaves is about 12 centimeters, so you'd need an animal that had rods/cones that big, right? maybe a blue whale or something.
light is in the 500 terahertz range, microwaves are in the hundreds of mhz range. That's orders of magnitude difference. | [
"Starting in the 1970s, Adair conducted physiology studies as a fellow at the John B. Pierce Laboratory in New Haven to learn how humans and animals react to heat. This work led her to focus on the controversial area of microwaves and their effect on human health. Experimenting first on squirrel monkeys and then on... |
how was tim tebow so successful in college but not in the nfl? | While the rules are similar between NCAA and NFL football, there's a big difference in strategies. In college, there are lots of teams and not everyone is all that good. In the NFL, the players have more experience, have more physical strength and speed, and only made it to the NFL by being great in college. Combine that with the fact that players can stay on teams for more than 4 years and everyone's concentrated into 32 teams and the result is a lot of really good athletes.
Now that that's established, how does the quality of the players relate to strategy? In college, there is a heavy emphasis on plays like the option. Without getting into too much detail, an option is a play where the running back is near the quarterback and the quarterback, based on what the defense does, either runs with the ball or gives it to the running back. In college, these plays work great because if a player is aiming for the wrong guy, he can't recover and reach the actual ballcarrier. In the NFL, everyone's fast enough where you may be able to do a few option plays throughout the game, but you can't use the college-style strategy of just doing it on every other play.
So where does Tebow fit into this? Tebow has good speed and strength for a quarterback. In college, when he needed to run with the ball, he could knock over potential tacklers. In the NFL, the defensive players are bigger, stronger, and faster. Tebow's no weakling, but he's not going to run over a 300lb defensive lineman or blow by a linebacker. In short, NFL quarterbacks need to rely on passing. Simply put, Tebow was never an exceptional passer. His accuracy was ok and his throwing motion takes much more time than a typical NFL quarterback.
TL;DR: Tebow was a good running QB by college standards. He's not so impressive by NFL standards. Due to strategic differences between the leagues, NFL QBs need to rely on passing ability, which is Tebow's weakness. | [
"Tim Tebow became the full-time starting quarterback for the 2007 season. Although the Gators began with a 4–0 record and were ranked as high as third in media polls, a mid-season slump in which they lost three of four games to conference foes ended their hopes for another national championship. They finished with ... |
how are westerner's "chinese" name decided ans given? | Yep mostly phonetic. Generic names such as Mark is normally translated to 马克 (Mah-Ker) while Paul is translated to 保罗 (Bao-Luo). Same thing applies for names that aren't common as well...but im not sure who decides for the famous ppl oops | [
"Chinese people, except for those traveling or living outside China, rarely reverse their names to the western naming order (given name, then family name). Western publications usually preserve the Chinese naming order, with the family name first, followed by the given name. Beginning in the early 1980s, in regards... |
What was the "known world" for Asian people in ancient times, roman times, etc. ? | The Han Chinese knew a decent amount, but largely shrouded in myth. Here is a list of historical documents:
_URL_0_
The ones translated by John Hill are the best. There are descriptions and names for the chief cities of the Eastern empire, primary exports, notable flora, some not entirely nonsensical reports about the Roman political system, and so on.
The Japanese, at least as late as the Heian period, knew very little about the world beyond China, Korea, and Central Asia. One writer has his character shipwrecked in Persia while sailing from Japan to China, which should give you an idea. | [
"The first continental use of Asia is attributed to Herodotus (about 440 BCE), not because he innovated it, but because his \"Histories\" are the earliest surviving prose to describe it in any detail. He defines it carefully, mentioning the previous geographers whom he had read, but whose works are now missing. By ... |
what's the 'clicky' noise when shaking some types of aerosol cans? | Metal marble in the can to help stir the paint | [
"Cartridge scarers include a wide variety of noise-producing cartridges usually fired from rockets or rope bangers, or on aerodromes from modified pistols or shotguns, which produce a loud bang and emit flashes of light. They include shellcrackers, screamer shells and whistling projectiles, exploding projectiles, b... |
How was Erotic Literature received by the public in the 17th Century? |
Hey! A question on my field!
First, 'erotic literature' (very good use of the correct term) was first printed in the late 1490's, the pioneer in the field being Pietro Aretino, of course.
The short answer is... What public?
The public, by and large could not read. Reading was still mostly limited to the upper classes, though it becomes much more widespread in the 18th century (1700's), and you see booksellers like Edmund Curll making a living selling erotic and controversial books. In the 1600's however, the seventeenth century, there was not really a reading 'public.'
Most of what was published (in England) was in Latin and Italian, many of them reprints of Aretino's works. Some of the more famous works were written in this era, like *Nashe's Dildoe*, and *The School of Venus* (1680).
What does survive from the seventeenth century (again, England), however, are erotic manuscripts. These manuscripts were absolutely fascinating items. You could think of them as group-notebooks. What this means is that maybe there would be a group of male college students (and these manuscripts are mostly found intact in University records), and individuals would write various things in them for everyone to read. Some things erotic, some things not. For example, there may be a recipe for "cleaning the quente (cunt)" alongside a long erotic poem. Another manuscript might have a recipe for curing a hangover alongside of a copied letter, a political satire. There was no real organization or coherence to them, although towards the end of the era, tables of contents began to be imposed after the fact.
Erotic manuscripts were essentially not 'literature' as they had a lack of coherence to them. They were, however, erotic 'discourse.' What I mean by this is that pornography might be used to launch social. religious, or political criticism.
The most famous of these might be Rochester's Satyr (Satire) on Charles II, in which he says:
"In th' isle of Britain, long since famous grown/ For breeding the best cunts in Christendom,/ There reigns, and oh! long may he reign and thrive, / The easiest King and best-bred man alive." and uses erotic discourse to accuse of the King of being too busy fucking and not busy enough overseeing the affairs of state. | [
"The rise of the novel in 18th-century England provided a new medium for erotica. One of the most famous in this new genre was \"Fanny Hill\" (1748) by John Cleland. This book set a new standard in literary smut and was often adapted for the cinema in the 20th century. Peter Fryer suggests that \"Fanny Hill\" was a... |
how do airlines get your checked luggage on the right plane when there is a short layover? | They usually sort it at the departing gate. They know which luggage needs to be taken out first. That information is sent to arrive airport. They also compartmentalize the bags. Ie, belt, terminal 1, terminal 2, etc. So this way, its easy to put the bags in correct cart and take it to correct place. | [
"Many airlines have a deadline for passengers to check in before each flight. This is to allow the airline to offer unclaimed seats to stand-by passengers, to load luggage onto the plane and to finalize documentation for take-off. The passenger must also take into account the time that may be needed for them to cle... |
When (and where) did the concept of "paper money" began? | You might want to check out:
- [When did the Monetary system using "paper money" we have today start?](_URL_0_)
- [What are the earliest dates for paper money?](_URL_1_)
- [How did they prevent counterfeiting of paper money before modern things like holograms, fluorescent ink, and microprinting?](_URL_2_) | [
"Paper currency first developed in Tang dynasty China during the 7th century, although true paper money did not appear until the 11th century, during the Song dynasty. The usage of paper currency later spread throughout the Mongol Empire or Yuan dynasty China. European explorers like Marco Polo introduced the conce... |
How do optical illusions appear to be moving? | I'm an artist who creates optical illusions. The big reason this particular type of illusion works is because the value of the lines lead the eye. Other moving illusions can force the perspective with the thickness of the lines. It is the same principle shown in [this famous illusion](_URL_0_) but much simplified. If you look at that one you can see the white color on one side and the black on the other. When you focus on one part of the drawing, your area of view is much smaller and your brain then imposes what it thinks should be in that place instead. It's similar but not quite exactly like the lens of a camera rack focusing. The big difference is that your brain also interpolates what it thinks it should be seeing. | [
"The term illusory motion, also known as motion illusion, is an optical illusion in which a static image appears to be moving due to the cognitive effects of interacting color contrasts and shape position. Apparent motion is the most common type of illusory motion and is perceived when images are displayed in succe... |
Are their any instances where a historian has run for public office in the US or elsewhere? | Former speaker Newt Gingrich was an assistant professor of history at West Georgia College before being elected to Congress. | [
"Richard Norton Smith (born 1953) is an American historian and author specializing in U.S. presidents and other political figures. In the past, he worked as a freelance writer for \"The Washington Post\", and worked with U.S. Senators Edward Brooke and Bob Dole.\n",
"Leonard Dupee White (January 17, 1891 in Acton... |
why are deer extremely sensitive to even the quietest sounds (rustling leaves), but run out in front of cars like they don't hear them? | Maybe they hear the car but think it's farther away so they don't care. Like they hear it, 100 feet away and think the car can't possibly travel at 70 mph to hit me in time, so I'll just run across this road. | [
"A contributing factor to deer-vehicle collisions, as preventable as it is prevalent, is the time of day at which motorists travel through deer habitation. During the daytime, motorists can more easily see and avoid hitting deer. At night, most especially during the dusk and dawn hours, deer are much harder to see,... |
If two galaxies collided, would there be collisions? | It's really true. The space between stars is really quite large. | [
"Collisions occur when two galaxies pass directly through each other and have sufficient relative momentum not to merge. The stars of interacting galaxies will usually not collide, but the gas and dust within the two forms will interact, sometimes triggering star formation. A collision can severely distort the shap... |
Where can I go to research famine, persecution, and diaspora around the time of German Unification (~1870s). | "The Long Nineteenth Century" by Blackburn is a general history of Germany, ending with WW1. You'll find plenty of information to get started in the book, as it is well sourced. I don't recall it being too specific in that area, but would certainly not hurt to start your search. | [
"Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University publishes a series of booklets called Famine Folios, a unique resource for students, scholars and researchers, as well as general readers, covering many aspects of the Famine in Ireland from 1845–1852 — the worst demographic catastrophe of 19th-century Europe.... |
why are chip bags so loud? | Its because of the type of plastic that they use to make the bags. Because chips go stale rather quickly when exposed to oxygen they use a a high density plastic and pack them with gas(not sure what kind nitrogen?) To keep them fresh until you open them. The type of plastic they use is stiff so it makes a krinkley noise when moved. Hope that helps | [
"Chippers of this type have many drawbacks and safety issues. If an operator becomes snagged on material being fed into the machine, injury or death is very likely. Chippers of this type are also very loud. The chips produced may be very large, and if thin material is inserted, it may be cut into slivers rather tha... |
Do we have any primary sources which explicitly accuse Edward II of being a homosexual or is this theory based on innuendo and conjecture? | An anonymous chronicler writing during the civil wars of the 1320s, wrote that:
> ...upon looking on him [Piers Gaveston] the son of the king immediately felt such love for him that he entered into a covenant of constancy, and bound himself with him before all other mortals with a bond of indissoluble love, firmly drawn up and fastened with a knot.
The modern judgement on this by Edward's biographer [J. R. S. Phillips](_URL_0_) is that:
> Such comments have led to the modern assumption that their relationship was definitely sexual. The evidence for this, however, is far from clear. While some of the chroniclers' remarks about Edward II can be interpreted as implying homosexuality or bisexuality, too many of them are either much later in date or the product of hostility, or a combination of the two, and thus not acceptable at face value. | [
"The possibility that Edward had a sexual relationship with Gaveston or his later favourites has been extensively discussed by historians, complicated by the paucity of surviving evidence to determine for certain the details of their relationships. Homosexuality was fiercely condemned by the Church in 14th-century ... |
the difference between standard deviation, standard error and variance. | Standard deviation and standard error are both functions of the variance, so we can start by trying to understand the variance first.
The variance is something that, intuitively, measures the "spread" of a distribution. It is how far away on average points from your sample will be from the mean of your distribution, where we say "how far away" in this case means "squared distance." Now there are a whole host of reasons for using the squared distance for this type of thing, an example being that it is *additive* (i.e., var(X+Y) = var(X)+var(Y) for uncorrelated X and Y). This is something we don't get with standard deviation.
However, the variance is not a linear map in that for a constant c,
var(c*X) = c^2 * var(X)
and not
var(c*X) = c*var(X).
We can get this with the standard deviation, which is the square root of the variance. This scale property can be useful because this statistic will then have the same units as your data, so we can say things like "Z number of standard deviations away from the mean" as the units are now consistent.
Finally, the standard error is typically defined as the standard deviation of a given statistic defined from a sample. For example, the standard error of the sample mean is the population standard deviation divided by the square root of the sample size, since the variance of the sample mean is the population variance divided by the sample size. Standard errors are also useful in that they have the same units as elements of your sample, and often statistical tests are based around how many standard errors a point is from a given statistic. | [
"The standard deviation of a random variable, statistical population, data set, or probability distribution is the square root of its variance. It is algebraically simpler, though in practice less robust, than the average absolute deviation.\n",
"Variance (or standard deviation) is not a risk measure in the above... |
how rockets like the saturn 5, the soyuz, and the space x rocket stay pointed up and straight. eli5. | Before they launch, they're held in place with scaffolding.
After launch, the force is controlled and directed such that up is the direction they mostly go in, with very minor adjustments in the nozzles to change direction. | [
"SA-500D was one of the five pre-flight configurations of the Saturn V. This configuration showed the Saturn V's \"bending and vibration characteristics\" and verified \"the adequacy of guidance and control systems' design.\" The rocket's of thrust would generate vigorous shaking and it was important to see that th... |
how can houses in detroit be on sale for a dollar? | my parents owned a house in detroit that they owed back taxes on to the amount of $7k or so. they let wayne county foreclose with no objection. the first time it is put up for auction the price is set at that $7. if it doesnt sell it goes back up for auction 6 months later starting at $50. i thought long and hard about buying it since i grew there but its just a bad investment. there's upkeep ,sure, but there's also property taxes, about $3500 a year. and you're living in detroit.
there are thousands of houses like this in detroit. its a city built for 2 million with only about 650,000 residents. no demand means no value.
and as for renting, that house i grew up in? my uncle is living in it, after foreclosure. he pays the utilities and cuts the grass and NO ONE is coming to kick him out. you dont have to rent in detroit. you can just squat. noone cares.
| [
"The average price of homes sold in Detroit in 2012 was $7,500. , 47 houses in Detroit were listed for $500 or less, with five properties listed for $1. Despite the extremely low price of Detroit properties, most of the properties have been on the market for more than a year as the boarded up, abandoned houses of t... |
math constants. | We just found them as we investigated things.
Take Pi; when people were investigating circles & their proportions, someone noticed that every circle's circumference was always about 3 times it's diameter. 'That's interesting' (the words preceding 99% of all major discoveries ever!) and so more investigations led to the discovery that π is actually always exactly 3.14159265.... etc. for every possible circle.
Constants are discovered when you experiment and increasing one thing ways leads to a predictable increase in something else. A spring, for example: if you Han weights off a spring, the spring stretches more the more weight you add. In fact, when you double the weight, you double the stretch. This means you can say that extension is proportional to load, and so extension = a constant x the load. In this case every spring has a different constant - but sometimes we discover that some constants are the same under all circumstances, and so we have Planck's constant, gravitational field constant etc. | [
"A mathematical constant is a number whose value is fixed by an unambiguous definition, often referred to by a symbol or by mathematicians' names to facilitate using it across multiple mathematical problems. Constants arise in many areas of mathematics, with constants such as and occurring in such diverse context... |
why wont my graphics card run certain games? | Newer graphics cards come with new features, which the old ones don't support. If a game requests a feature from the card which it doesn't have, it'll likely give up.
| [
"Due to the increasing computing power of each generation of game consoles, a novel use has emerged where they are repurposed into High-performance computing (HPC) clusters. Some examples of game console clusters are Sony PlayStation clusters and Microsoft Xbox clusters. Another example of consumer game product is ... |
How strongly does the IQ bell curve correlate with achievement? | [Here's](_URL_0_) a paper that attempts to relate Piaget IQ tests to standardized test scores for school achievement, and finds little overlap.
[This](_URL_2_) study states > When success measures were regressed against intelligence and personality scales or factors, intelligence did not account for variance beyond that explained by personality.
However, [this one](_URL_1_) seems to indicate that it can be predictive of success, but only in very specific circumstances and that life outcomes (getting a job, getting a career, rate of pay), when controlled for other promotional factors that influence/are influenced by IQ, aren't largely dependent on IQ. | [
"\"The Bell Curve\", published in 1994, was written by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray to explain the variations in intelligence in American society, warn of some consequences of that variation, and propose social policies for mitigating the worst of the consequences. The book's title comes from the bell-shap... |
how bad does the situation have to be for a person to seek asylum from another country? and how demonstrable does the threat have to be? (proof) | Hop the border, turn yourself in, and apply for asylum. You'll be granted temporary stay during the trial. If you can demonstrate the need of jumping the border to save your life, you will be granted permenant residency. | [
"A person is eligible for the discretionary relief of asylum if they are a refugee—that is, \"unable or unwilling to return to, and is unwilling or unable to avail themselves of the protection of, [their home] country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationa... |
why does the solar system get drawn like a glat plain? are all the planets on the same vertical level? if they are, what happens if we go up? | _URL_0_
The orbits aren't all perfectly aligned. Ceres has the most noticeable tilt, the others are less dramatic. | [
"Most of the major bodies of the Solar System orbit the Sun in nearly the same plane. This is likely due to the way in which the Solar System formed from a protoplanetary disk. Probably the closest current representation of the disk is known as the \"invariable plane of the Solar System\". Earth's orbit, and hence,... |
biologically we have evolved to have carbohydrates as our main source of energy. why are they such a taboo in the health and dieting scene? | We actually work on sugar and we can break down carbohydrates to obtain that sugar. We store the excess in fat that we can use later.
For the vast majority of the history of life, obtaining food was a major activity that we had to do in order to get enough energy to live and it took energy to do that. For hundreds of millions of years, life walked that fine edge between getting enough energy to live while using less energy to get that food. One of the big survival factors was being able to take advantage of abundances of food by storing it so we could get through times where we couldn't get any (i.e. fat).
With civilization and cooperation, we've made is far less energy intensive to obtain food but it's still too new of a concept for evolution to have possibly caught up. So we have to consciously fight the instinct to consume the abundance of food that lots of people have access to because the mechanisms that used to help us survive (storing excess food as fat) eventually reaches a point where our bodies never evolved to handle the constant higher levels of fat for extended periods.
Focusing on avoiding obvious carbohydrates is a fairly straightforward way for us to self-regulate.
| [
"The most important carbohydrate is glucose, a simple sugar (monosaccharide) that is metabolized by nearly all known organisms. Glucose and other carbohydrates are part of a wide variety of metabolic pathways across species: plants synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water by photosynthesis storing the... |
how to differentiate nuclear blasts from earthquakes | Earthquakes are sinusoidal and logarythmic.. bombs make 1 wave and then small echoes are seen. | [
"Seismic stations record underground pressure waves and transmit this data for processing via secure communication links. There are many challenges involved with trying to differentiate a nuclear explosion from other natural and man-made phenomena, such as earthquakes, mining explosions, and construction. Nuclear e... |
how were prescription glasses made accurately before the invention of modern technology? | What modern technology do you envision? Spherical lenses were entirely within the abilities of technology 500 years ago. Prior to that we didn't really bother with glasses.
Also prescriptions sure didn't exist. Such glasses were fairly limited to the wealthy. | [
"Over time, the construction of frames for glasses also evolved. Early eyepieces were designed to be either held in place by hand or by exerting pressure on the nose (\"pince-nez\"). Girolamo Savonarola suggested that eyepieces could be held in place by a ribbon passed over the wearer's head, this in turn secured b... |
What makes Great Man theory rock/suck? (i.e. What are the major current historical interpretive practices?) | So basically, history in the last 50 years has moved from the "Great Man History", or more specifically the standard politico-military histories that were oh so popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, towards cultural/social history.
The difference between cultural and social history is pretty goddamn slim, but basically they both study the history of people. An intermediate step was called Marxist history, or the study of the "proletariat", and that got cleaned up to (it got a haircut, put on a suit, and threw out its Che Guevara t-shirt. Fuckin' sellout.) "bottom up" history. Basically, all four really tried to figure out what everybody else was doing when the "Great Men" went out a'conquer-in.
In the case of Cultural/Social history, they really try to understand trends, experiences, and groups. Social historians look mainly for those trends and macro-level conclusions, which can be extrapolated down to fit smaller groups (usually). OTOH, cultural history focuses on "microhistories", or really small tales, vignettes, and stories of people, places, traditions, rituals, or other really unique things. These stories are then wrapped up into a larger connection to society in that place, at that time.
Actually, I would kinda say that Cultural history has really "taken over" history, and its really now the dominant, hegemonic, methodology for most historians. Or it is at my school, its hard to tell what the outside world is like sometimes. Schools are like echo-chambers in some ways.
A great person to read, to try and see this method in practice is Natalie Zemon Davis. She has a collection of Essays (*Society and Culture in Early Modern France*), which is 8 essays that detail specific groups, rituals, etc. of early modern French life, and then connect them to great French Culture, and also modern society. An example: She has one essay about Journeyman printers in Lyons. These printers formed a group, the Griffarions (I *think* I spelled that right), which was sort of a trade union. This "union" then went around the town pissing off all the Protestants, killing scabs, and raising hell. The protestants kicked them out following their rise to power in Lyons. That essay really shows what Cultural History is: I take a small topic, explore it in detail, then connect it to something larger and more meaningful.
The major problem I have with cultural history, and especially its stats in the discipline now (again, where Im at in it) is its *too* powerful. Before, there was no balance between the "great men" and the little guys. Now theres no balance the other way, and nobody wants to talk "traditional" European history. Thats great if you really love, say, sexual history, and writing about the sexual mores of Victorian women really gets your motor running. In this methodology, youll do well. Me, I like War. And Tanks. And Strategy. Im a "lines on the map" kind of guy. I really want to talk about Bismarck, and the Molktes, and Marshall. But thats not the history thats popular right now, so sometimes I feel left out of the whole "micro-cultural-history" party. So thats my big criticism with the current direction of things. That and the fucking post-modernist school. Seriously. Fuck those guys.
Also, I notice your flair is Japanese history. Im not up on my Asian historiography, but Im pretty sure that native Asian historians are likely practicing their own specific kinds of historiography. There is enough trouble trying to apply what Ive just said to other Anglophone countries like England, let alone the rest of Europe, or *Asia*.
> what sort of epistemic theories underpin different "camps" in current historical practice?
I would answer this, if I knew what it meant. | [
"The History of Rock is a compilation album by Kid Rock. Released in 2000, the album consists of re-recorded versions of songs from the album \"The Polyfuze Method\", remixed versions of songs from the album \"Early Mornin' Stoned Pimp\", demos and unreleased songs, including the single \"American Bad Ass\".\n",
... |
is there any way jerking off can result in infertility at some point? | Infertility, no, not at all.
But it can result in a mild case of impotence, if you get used to a different kind of stimulation than actual sex provides. | [
"The insane gynaecologist, Dr. Marukido Sadao (Marquis de Sade), theorizes that a woman is unable to become pregnant if she is writhing in intense pain during intercourse. He sets about testing this new method of birth control by torturing women during sex.\n",
"When the umbilical cord is constricted (q.v. \"acci... |
why are there chechens fighting in the pro-russian side in eastern ukraine, when they originally were fighting against the russians in the chechen wars? | They do what they are paid for by Russian (and Chechen) government.
For now Chechnya is governed by Russian puppet who gets loads of money and will do anything Putin asks him to do.
Why Chechens and not Russian from other regions? I guess they are cheaper and have better skills for purpose. | [
"BULLET::::- Chechen, Abkhaz, Ossetian, and Cossack paramilitaries have been active participants in the insurgency in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Some Chechen opponents of Russian government were fighting pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine for the Ukrainian government.\n",
"The Invasion of Dagestan leading to th... |
why do i see rusty looking spots on the sidewalk and road? | The reinforcing rebar or steel mesh encapsulated in the concrete is rusting. | [
"The road is the subject of folklore and numerous local legends. According to \"Weird NJ\", these rumors have drawn more visitors to the area, to the annoyance of residents, who have in the past gone so far as to smear the pole holding the street sign (pictured) at the road's southern end with grease or oil to prev... |
What are the negative effects of a low carb/high fat diet? | Well.
What happens during a LCHF-diet is that you force your body to burn fat, and only fat. What happens when you metabolize fat is that [ketone bodies](_URL_0_) as produced, leading to a state of ketosis. Ketone bodies *can* be used as an energy source by the brain and other cells, as in the case during starvation as well as LCHF-diets.
There is evidence on both sides of the spectrum. My own personal opinion is: Eat balanced, eat right. Cutting out one part of your diet is unnecessary unless you have a pathological condition. | [
"Some randomized control trials have shown that low-carbohydrate diets, especially very low-carbohydrate diets, perform better than low-fat diets in improving cardiometabolic risk factors in the long term, suggesting that low-carbohydrate diets are a viable option alongside low-fat diets for people at risk of cardi... |
from a business standpoint, what are the benefits and disadvantages of paying employees weekly, biweekly, twice a month, and monthly? | A weekly or every-other week basis can simplify operations: everyone knows that pay periods close one day, and checks are written on another day of the week, regardless of the calendar date.
A monthly or bi-monthly basis can screw with that, as pay periods and payroll processing may not concurrent with the same day of the week every time, but helps employees budget revolving expenses, which are typically also monthly. | [
"The reason that employees are often paid according to hours of work rather than by direct measurement of results is that it is often more efficient to use indirect systems of controlling the quantity and quality of effort, due to a variety of informational and other issues (e.g., turnover costs, which determine th... |
if the universe is expanding so rapidly, why do we see no visible change locally? | Because the universe is so huge and we're so small. | [
"Based on a huge amount of experimental observation and theoretical work, it is now believed that the reason for the observation is that \"space itself is expanding\", and that it expanded very rapidly within the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. This kind of expansion is known as a \"\"metric\"\" expa... |
Why are gases more soluble in cold liquid, but solids are more soluble in warm liquid? | Great question. Gas molecules tend to fly around and bump into each other. If you add heat to a gas, which is in a ballon, the volume of the balloon increases because gases expand when you heat them. As you add the heat, the gas molecules move faster and collide with more force. Solids, on the other hand, are in relatively fixed position.
Say you have a pot of boiling water with the lid on, water molecules are constantly being shot out of the liquid and being shot back into it. The amount the leaves and enters depends on pressure, temperature, and volume of the container. The more heat inside the water, the faster the water molecules will shoot out.
A hot gas in a liquid will have a lot of energy and be able to escape the liquid, but a colder gas will have less energy to escape and be more likely to remain in the liquid making it more soluble.
The atoms in solids are in fixed positions and bound together by either ionic or covalent bonding. Let's assume the liquid in this case is water and the dissolvable substance is salt, which has ionic bonds. When you had heat to water the molecules will move faster and with more energy. Water molecules with more kinetic energy will slam into salt particles with more energy which allows it to break apart the salt particles with more ease. Simply imagine throwing a baseball really fast, then really slow, at a LEGO structure. The faster you throw the baseball, the farther the LEGOs will fly. | [
"Both solids and liquids have free surfaces, which cost some amount of free energy to form. In the case of solids, the amount of free energy to form a given unit of surface area is called surface energy, whereas for liquids the same quantity is called surface tension. The ability of liquids to flow results in diffe... |
. why does room temperature coffee taste ‘cold’ but room temperature milk tastes ‘warm’? | Because most coffee you drink is hotter than room temperature, so in comparison to what you expect the coffee to feel like, a coffee at room temperature would feel cold.
But we usually drink milk from the refrigerator so when it's a room temperature it's hotter than what you expect.
And the reason why coffee is usually hot is because you need hot water to properly get the favour out of the grains and the reason why milk is usually cold is because you can keep it longer that way. | [
"A cup of warm milk or a milk-based drink is traditionally used for sleep induction. Hot chocolate is also a traditional bedtime drink but this contains high levels of xanthines (caffeine and theobromine), which are stimulants and therefore may be counterproductive. Also, a pinch of turmeric powder with warm milk r... |
How did China come to have so many massively populated cities? | One thing to keep in mind is that administrative boundaries work differently in China than in the United States. Municipal administrative units usually include most of the suburbs of a city, and some of the outlying rural areas as well. The most extreme example of this is Chongqing which is the size of South Carolina in order to put the Three Gorges Dam into the Chongqing urban area. However, even other Chinese municipal areas are much larger than their American counterparts.
In fact, the Chinese government is actively trying to keep it's cities small. Engels had strong views about vast urban agglomeration, and much of Chinese policies, from it's investments in intercity high speed rail, and the operation of the household registration system is designed to keep cities from getting too big. The success in this is mixed at best. | [
"Chinese cities of the Song period became some of the largest in the world, owing to technological advances and an agricultural revolution. Kaifeng, which served as the capital and seat of government during the Northern Song (960–1127), had some half a million residents in 1021, with another half-million living in ... |
how does viewing violence affect people's mental health? | I’m not sure there is really a correlation there. More likely people already predisposed to some kind of mental health problem can be affected by viewing violence. | [
"On July 26, 2000 the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry stated that \"prolonged viewing of media violence can lead to emotional desensitizati... |
What caused the United States to have the highest infant mortality rate among western countries? | The [Congressional Research Service](_URL_3_) investigated whether inconsistent recording of births could be the cause of our bad infant mortality rates (IMR) and found that it does not ~~really affect~~ fully explain the results. (There is some effect from the inconsistent recording, but it isn't significant to explain the large gap).
We also have one of the lowest life expectancies of any developed nations and there isn't really any controversy about that statistic. The most likely reason is because we have a poor health care system. High infant mortality is most likely caused by the same thing.
One interesting thing to look at is the IMR of people with different health care plans. "Researchers have found that IMRs are the lowest for infants born to women enrolled in private insurance, that IMRs are higher for women enrolled in Medicaid, and that IMRs are highest for infants born to women who were uninsured."
So basically it is probably safe to say that the primary reason that our IMR is worse than most other countries is that we don't provide very good health care to our citizens.
Links:
_URL_0_
_URL_3_
_URL_1_
_URL_2_
TL;DR Poor health care causes the US to have some of the worst performance in almost every health metric. It is not because we are recording live births differently.
EDIT: Changed a misleading paraphrase. Thanks to /u/ruotwocone for pointing that out.
EDIT 2: I'd also like to point out that the issue of racial diversity was examined by the same CRS study and also found it to not be a particularly significant factor. Included a CDC link with essentially the same findings. | [
"In the 1850s, the infant mortality rate in the United States was estimated at 216.8 per 1,000 babies born for whites and 340.0 per 1,000 for African Americans, but rates have significantly declined in the West in modern times. This declining rate has been mainly due to modern improvements in basic health care, tec... |
What was the general sentiment felt by WWII veterans towards Vietnam, the Korean War, and the veterans returning home from those wars? | Purely anecdotal
Speaking to Australian Vietnam vets, many were denied admission to their local RSL's, many were told Vietnam 'wasn't a real war' by WW2 vets, and that the strongest condemnation they received was from veterans. I wish I had a source other than anecdote; these were guys from RSL's who came to talk to my class, so I'm inclined to believe them. | [
"As well as the negative sentiments towards returned soldiers from some sections of the anti-war movement, some Second World War veterans also held negative views of the Vietnam War veterans. As a result, many Australian Vietnam veterans were excluded from joining the Returned Servicemen's League (RSL) during the 1... |
When world war 2 ended, why did German soldiers want to surrender to the western allies rather than the Soviet union? | Couple of reasons, since the invasion of the USSR in 1941 German treatment of Soviet prisoners had been horrendous, kept in wire enclosures until they starved, succumbed to disease, or were simply summarily executed (among the first victims gassed at Auschwitz were Russian PoWs). With no quarter given on the Eastern Front it could hardly be asked. Wehrmacht soldiers rightly feared Russian vengeance, after what had been done in the occupied territories of the USSR, and knew that capture would mean heading for forced labor in Siberian gulags, if they were not shot out of hand. Many, if they survived, weren't released until the '50s.
Treatment of PoWs from the western allies was - comparatively speaking - much better, as was their treatment of German PoWs, although there were incidents of brutality on both sides they nominally adhered to the Geneva Conventions on treatment of PoWs (to which the USSR was not a signatory). A commander of the [352nd Volksgrenadier](_URL_0_) wrote to the families of six men MIA, *"The Americans opposite us have been fighting fairly, they have treated German prisoners well and fed them. If your husband is a PoW, you will probably receive news of him through the Red Cross."* It got him in trouble with the party for suggesting that captivity was a tolerable state.
Compare this to the Eastern Front, where the wretched prisoners taken by the Red Army were known as *Stalinpferd*, a Stalin horse. | [
"One reason for the policy was that the Allies wished to avoid a repetition of the stab-in-the-back myth that arose in Germany after World War I, which attributed Germany's loss to betrayal by Jews, Bolsheviks, and Socialists. The myth was used by the Nazis in their propaganda. It was felt that an unconditional sur... |
why haven't we come up with an easier way to get to the top of mount everest? | The reason they want to go there is *because* it is dangerous and difficult and life threatening. They aren't going up there for the view and to get a tan.
Regardless, standing at that altitude has seriously life threatening effects. Climbers need to acclimate for weeks to be able to survive it. Making it easier would mean people would be less prepared to go, and probably make it even more dangerous.
Also, the area is a nature preserve and of great cultural and religious importance to the people who live nearby. There are monasteries and shrines around it and many areas on Everest are considered some of the most important sites of Tibetan and Indian Buddhism.
On top of that there is the issue of just how *remote* Everest is. It is many, many miles away from running water, electricity, etc. | [
"Sometimes the normal route is not the easiest ascent to the summit, but just the one that is most used. There may be technically easier variations. This is especially the case on the Watzmannfrau, the Hochkalter and also Mount Everest. There may be many reasons these easier options are less well-used:\n",
"The 1... |
Why were the Islam?Christian preachers unsuccessful in penetrating the religion deep into India? | You seem to be asking 2 different questions. 1.) "Why were Islam and Christianity unsuccessful in getting converts in India" and 2.) "Why wasn't Hinduism completely eradicated by a monotheistic religion." These are two different things, and let me first say that Historians can't exactly explain why something *didn't* happen. That's not within our capacity, but I'll gladly share some relevant insight with you.
For one thing, your first question is based on a bad premise. Islam and Christianity were both successful in penetrating India. As of today, roughy 1/3 of the global Muslim population either lives in the Indian Subcontinent or is of that heritage. Indian subcontinent because, as Im sure you are probably aware, prior to the British Raj there was no cohesive Indian nation. Just a sub-continent of various independent polities. While they most likely had a cultural understanding of being a part of the Hindustani fabric, they were all in practice nations independent of each other. Even when united under one of several Empires such as the Maurya of Mughal, these nations would not have seen each other as the same people. Prior to the advent of Islam or Christianity, these would all have also fallen under a Dharmic tradition- either Hinduism or Buddhism. Anyways, fast forward a couple thousand years, and the modern States of Pakistan and Bangladesh (which emerged from 2 of India's most prominent states) exist at all because of how deeply Islam penetrated India. And even with that being the case, the Indian Republic is still most likely home to the 2nd largest Muslim population in the world. I can't see how Islam failed to penetrate India with these things being the case. As far as Christianity, while it is less prevalent in India, so too is the amount of time that India was under rule by Christians significantly less than the time India was under the rule of Muslims. Even then, [there are states in East India today that are more Christian per capita than the American South](_URL_0_), with Christianity being the 3rd largest religion in the Indian Republic. So, again, i would stop short of calling that 'unsuccessful'.
But this is a good point to pivot to your next question. Why didn't Hinduism get eradicated completely? Truthfully, I cant answer this question. Dont know that anyone can. But for one thing, look at how despite being home to so many Muslims (almost half the Arab World even), the Muslim population of the Indian Republic is only 14% of the overall population. INDIA IS HUGEEEEEEE. Both geographically and demographically, and naturally this has had an effect on how thoroughly these lands have been proselytized. In fact, there is only one macro-region with a comparable population, China, and that region mind you hasn't totally adopted monotheism either.
Another point of consideration though, is that Hinduism was in a sense created by the British. What I mean by this is, prior to the Raj, there was no centralized or universal 'Hindu' religion/identity. There still isn't. Rather, there were hundreds of Dhramic traditions that were indigenous to the sub-continent, traditions that would vary wildly from region to region. The British took all of these and compartmentalized them under a catch-all term: Hinduism. Prior to this, there really was not a universal Hindu identity or sense of nationhood, going back to the earlier commentary on how the Indian states saw each-other as different nations and peoples. If there was, a tiny Muslim minority would not have been able to rule the 'Hindu' super-majority for so long, no way. Rather, the Islamic rule of India as well as the spread of Islam in India happened at a state by state basis. No one went in looking at the whole of India as one nation or land to conquer/convert but rather a region of a bunch of disjointed nations (and rightfully so). Contrast this for example with the Ottoman incursions into Europe, which was rebuffed with a united Christian front. It was understood that that was a Muslim vs Christian ideological alongside the physical conflict. This was not always the case in India.
For this reason, there wasn't a campaign or push to conquer/convert India all at once. That would have been akin to the notion of trying to conquer/convert "Asia" or "Africa" in one breath, simply unheard of. So as a result of this, we can see that Islam spread more or less in an unorganized manner from state to state, 'nation to nation'. SO my point is, if you look at it in terms of "the spread of Islam in Bengal/Punjab/Sindh/Hyderabad/Tamil/Kerala" as opposed to "the spread of Islam in India at large", you have a better framework of understanding how the Muslim conquerers themselves saw it. And in this regard, some nations/regions/states were fully engulfed by Islam. Its all about perspective.
Im sorry if that doesn't fully answer your question, but I don't think there is any single answer to why Hindusim wasn't completely eradicated in India. But in summary, Im sure the incredible size and scale of Hindustani civilization was a factor. But alongside the point about perspective, keep in mind that both Islam and Christianity in fact did successfully penetrate India, at least to some extent.
Sources:
Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu-Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India
Cynthia Talbot
Comparative Studies in Society and History
Vol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 1995), pp. 692-722
Cambridge University Press
[Read Here](_URL_2_)
Who Invented Hinduism?
David N. Lorenzen
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 630-659
Cambridge University Press
[Read here](_URL_1_)
Pennington, Brian. The Invention of Hinduism: Britons, Indians, and Construction of Religion in Colonial Bengal. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.
King, Richard. Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and "The Mystic East" New York: Routledge, 1999. Print. | [
"With the decline of the Mughals and a vast majority of the Muslim lands coming under the rule of the European colonial powers, Islamic missionary activity faced a new challenge, vis-a-vis Christian missionaries that arrived along with the colonial rulers. It was said that much of Muslim missionary zeal in India ar... |
why does david cameron want to scrap the human rights act and replace it with "the british bill of rights"? | _URL_1_
> In a speech to the Strasbourg assembly, Mr Cameron said the whole concept of human rights laws was in danger of becoming "distorted" and "discredited" because of the court's decisions.
> "We do have a real problem when it comes to foreign national who threaten our security," he said.
> **"The problem today is that you can end up with someone who has no right to live in your country, who you are convinced – and have good reason to be convinced – means to do your country harm. And yet there are circumstances in which you cannot try them, you cannot detain them and you cannot deport them."**
> "So having put in place every possible safeguard to ensure that (human rights) rights are not violated, we still cannot fulfil our duty to our law-abiding citizens to protect them."
> **Mr Cameron's comments come just a week after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that radical Islamic cleric Abu Qatada cannot be deported for fear he will not get a fair trial in Jordan.**
He believes the HRA goes too far and threatens the national security of the UK. So he wants to put in place human rights, but still keep the country safe.. in his eyes. You can have known terrorists in your country, but who have not violated any UK laws. And with that you cannot deport them because they cannot receive a "fair" trial in their wanted countries for their crimes. So you just keep terrorists on your soil, protected from the courts and deportation. This is just one example of the inconsistencies he sees with the HRA and protecting the UK. He wants to take control back from the EU and allow the UK to determine how to handle such situations.
_URL_0_
> “This is the country that wrote Magna Carta, the country that time and again has stood up for human rights, whether liberating Europe from fascism or leading the charge today against sexual violence in war.
> “Let me put it very clearly: We do not require instruction from judges in Strasbourg on this issue.
> “So at long last, with a Conservative government after the next election, this country will have a new British Bill of Rights to be passed in our Parliament, rooted in our values.” | [
"Prior to the 2010 general election, Conservative party leader David Cameron proposed replacing the Human Rights Act with a new \"British Bill of Rights\". After forming a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, these plans were shelved and reinstated only after the Conservative party won an overall majority in the 2... |
In a period of twelve years, Germany went from an emerging democracy to a dictatorship that eventually committed genocide. How? | When Germany was defeated in the First World War (in 1918) it caused a period of chaos which would eventually lead to Hitler. The defeat created a revolutionary situation and forced the Kaiser out of power. A new and very unstable democracy was created- the Weimar Republic. Germany's economy and society had been devastated by the war and this was greatly exacerbated by the peace treaty which it was forced to sign by the victorious allied powers (called the Versailles Treaty). Versailles forced Germany to pay huge reparations to the allied powers and also to give up quite a bit of territory and to limit its army. The treaty was economically damaging and politically humiliating and created huge resentment within Germany. At one point, when Germany could not afford to pay reparations, France even occupied part of the country. The currency totally collapsed and people literally had to take wheelbarrows of money to the shop to buy bread. So the new Weimar republic was always very unstable. There were 3 attempted communist revolutions from 1918-1923 and 2 attempted coups by the far right (one of them led by Hitler).
In the mid 20s the Weimar republic was able to stablize itself, and this created what is called the "golden age" of Weimar Germany (which only lasted a few years). It achieved stability by taking huge loans from the US which it could then use to pay the reparations. But in 1929 the Wall Street Crash happened, and this economic strategy was shattered forcing Germany into an even more terrible economic collapse than after WW1. Germany was the country most affected by the Great Depression. Unemployment was around 25% and the entire economy was collapsing. This situation caused a rise in popularity for both the far left (represented mainly by the Communist Party) and the far right (represented mainly by the Nazi party) which both proposed revolutionary solutions to the situation.
The Nazis were an extreme nationalist, facist party which had grown from being a really tiny party (of about 40 members when Hitler first joined) to a huge political force. In Hitler they had a very charismatic leader and adopted new methods of campaigning and propaganda. They argued for massive government intervention in the economy and promised that they would end unemployment by actively creating work (as Roosevelt would later do in the US). They also appealed to national sentiment. They condemned the Versailles treaty and argued that it was illegitimate and that they would entirely reject it. They openly argued that they wanted to expand Germany, win back the territory taken from it by the treaty and win more space (Lebensraum) in the east which would help build the German economy further. The Germans had only lost the first war, they claimed, because they had been betrayed by Jews and Communists who had undermined the country from within and were still doing so now. These arguments gained mass appeal and the Nazis did very well in elections. In the 1930 election the Nazis rose from about 3% to around 19% of the vote becoming the second party. The Communist Party also did well and got about 13%, they were the third party.
So as a result the traditional ruling parties of Germany lost their majority and were forced into increasingly unstable coalition governments which kept collapsing due to internal differences. None of these governments could find any solution to the economic crisis. Now the way the Weimar political system worked, there was a parliamentary system and the government was headed by a Chancellor (like a prime minister). But there was also a president who was meant to be mostly ceremonial but had powers which could be used in an emergency. The president at this time was a man called Hindenburg, a very old man, a conservative who was popular because he had been the head of the German army in WW1 and was seen as a war hero. Hindenburg now used his authority and appointed chancellors from the traditional parties to head minority governments and gave them emergency powers so they could rule by decree even though they did not have a majority in parliament.
This still did not stop the crisis however and the Nazi party was becoming more and more popular. In May 1932 Hindenburg appointed a conservative Franz Von Pappen to be chancellor who had almost no support in parliament (he did not even have a party) and resigned after only three days prompting new elections. Then in the July 1932 election The Nazis became the largest party almost doubling their support and winning around 38% of the vote. There was another election because parliament was so split in November 32 and the Nazis again became the largest party (although they lost around 4% mainly to the Communists). At this point the Left Wing were still stronger than the Nazis but they were split into two parties who could not collaborate- The Social Democratic Party and The Communist Party. The Nazis were openly committed to building a fascist dictatorship but it now became difficult to imagine any conservative government without their participation. Now Franz Von Pappen developed a plan and tried to convince Hindenburg. He believed that they could appoint Hitler as chancellor, use him to crush the left wing, but control him. He thought that if they gave Hitler some power, the conservatives could make him moderate his demands and bring him under their control. He seriously underestimated Hitler in part because he was an educated, upper class natural leader whereas he saw Hitler as an uneducated impostor. At first, he could not persuade Hindenburg who personally hated Hitler and did not trust him to bring him into the government. But by January 1933 Von Pappen persuaded Hindenburg to appoint Hitler chancellor. This was partly motivated by personal motives and Von Pappen's desire for revenge against his former friends who he thought had destroyed his government.
So Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933. At first it was part of a coalition government and the majority were conservatives like Von Pappen (who became Vice Chancellor). But Hitler and the Nazis quickly marginalized them, gaining control of the key institutions (like the police) and pushing through repressive legislation allowing people to arrested without charge. Then in February 1933, only a month after Hitler had been named chancellor, an event happened which helped him greatly in building his dictatorship. A communist militant set fire to the German Parliament. Hitler argued that this was intended as the signal for a Communist revolution and used the public outcry to blame the Communist Party in general (in reality the Communist Party had nothing to do with the fire). He persuaded Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree criminalizing the Communist Party. This allowed the Nazis to destroy their one major competitor (the communists were the third party) and to become, overnight a majority in the German parliament. In March Hitler passed the Enabling Act which granted him emergency powers allowing him to rule by decree, essentially as a dictator. By this point Hitler's power was complete. He used the conservatives to destroy the Left Wing- criminalising the socialists, communists and trade unions. But once the left wing was destroyed there was no opposition and the conservatives themselves could do nothing to stop him.
The last independent source of power in Germany was Hindenburg but in 1934 he died. Hitler then abolished the role of president and appointed himself Reichsfuhrer, which combined the role of Chancellor and President. He now ruled basically unopposed and was free to build the Nazi dictatorship. | [
"In 1919 a new democracy was formed in a German town known as the Weimar Republic. This new government was thought to be doomed from the start and after the hyperinflation of 1923, “money became so worthless that children could play with stacks of it.” Despite civil unrest in Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe... |
Why has there never been (widely known?) geopolitical conflict between Canada and the United States? | Anytime there has been something of that description, Britain was always the motivator.
In Canada's position there are a few things discouraging it from picking a fight with its neighbor.
1.) Canada has always had a population dearth relative to the United States. Less people means less resources for industry, research, and, most importantly, the military. It has been perennially outnumbered.
2.) It does not control trade routes that are critical to US trade. With the exception of the Great Lakes, Canada has never had the geographic advantage to just sever a trade line.
2b.) Canada is a modern military, but like many other nations, does not have the Navy to match the US Navy. If they are going to project power over a coastline, you have to be able to go toe-to-toe with the people you are trying to restrict.
3.) The Canadian border, de-militarized as it is, is near impossible to hold without giving you plans. Either side of the border would have to deploy an unreasonable number of units along that border.
4.) The US and Canada share a very similar heritage. A product of British colonialism, a "frontier legacy", and a people who know each others culture well enough on friendly terms. For instance, the NHL has teams from both sides of the border. Our cultures are inter-twined enough that making the other seem like a true enemy would take a lot of propaganda work.
Those are all I can think of off the top of my head. | [
"The dispute between Canada and the United States arose in 1969 with the trip of the U.S. oil tanker SS \"Manhattan\" through the Arctic Archipelago. The prospect of more American traffic headed to the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field made the Canadian government realize that political action was required should it decide to ... |
Is it true that a lot of old-timey sailors couldn't swim? | This is a broad questions, and as a result there's a lack of definitive statistics, but there seems to be a fair degree of consensus that for the most part European (and by extension early American) sailors were comparatively poor swimmers. For much of the period at least into the 19th century, moreover, a clear distinction was drawn between "bathing" (which essentially meant going into water where it was possible to stand, if need be, and which was relatively popular) and "swimming" (meaning in open water where it was not possible to stand, which was not.)
Several authorities have attempted estimates of the proportion of sailors who could swim. Overall, it seems to be agreed that as late as 1900 a high proportion of sailors – significantly more than half – were not able to swim.
* Nicholas Orme, in his *Early British Swimming, 55 BC to AD 1719*, comments that early swimming in Britain was confined largely to ponds and rivers, and almost never done in the sea; the practice also "virtually excluded the whole female sex" (p.107). He also usefully discusses the relatively late development of "scientific" swimming and efforts to maximise efficiency in the water, noting that up to the 17th century at least side-stroke was considered the fastest stroke available, modern strokes had not been invented, and swimmers in general were "weak in the efficiency and speed of their basic propulsive strokes."
* It's estimated that only about one in seven Dutch sailors in the first half of the 17th century could swim (Mike Dash, *Batavia's Graveyard* p.110)
* Little, in *The Buccaneer's Realm*, notes that, in the Caribbean, swimming was a common ability among the indigenous peoples of the West Indies and adds that "many whites ... swam and dived, and the notion that European sailors could not swim was false. Nonetheless, one captain observed 'how deficient our common seamen in general are.' Europeans who fell overboard generally drowned, even if they landed uninjured in the water.... Perhaps only one in four to one in six common sailors could swim."
* Compton, in *Why Sailors Can't Swim* p.18, notes that a contemporary newspaper estimated in 1910 that 40% of US Navy sailors could not swim.
As to the reasons why this was so, they probably combine culture and geography. It seems it was at least in part because the skill was not regarded as a natural one for "civilised" white men to possess, and that status (and fear of ridicule) was a factor here. In *Haunts of the Black Masseur: The Swimmer as Hero,* Charles Sprawson comments on the disinclination of British colonists in India to swim, despite the hot weather - "It was as though the English had taken to heart George Borrow's precept that a 'gentleman' should avoid swimming, 'for to swim you must be naked, and how would many a genteel person look without his clothes.'" Similarly Blackmore, in his *Manifest Perdition: Shipwreck Narrative and the Disruption of Empire*, pp.91-2, argues that "the human form in water... foregrounds the civilized/barbaric binarism... because natatorial ability is, in expansionist thinking, a 'barbaric' skill" - one that was beneath European sailors and which they expected other people to perform for them. Blackmore cites the Dutch navigator Jan van Linschoten's *Itinerary* (late C16th), which stresses how useful Arab men "infected" with Islam could be in this context. Where European gentlemen swam, it was generally in private and where they were not likely to be seen by either women or by their social inferiors.
While Sprawson also explores lots of other odd cultural tangents, noting that Rupert Brooke swam as a celebration of youth, Goethe as a declaration of freedom and beauty, and Baron Corvo as an expression of his homosexuality, it's also rather noticeable that there's almost no evidence in western sources for people learning to swim as a precaution or because it was seen as a useful skill until some way into the nineteenth century.
That said, I would guess that opportunity and conditions played at least as much a part in determining who could and who could not swim. One obvious factor is that facilities and conditions for teaching swimming safely were lacking. No swimming pools, and cold and uninviting local waters, probably help to explain why Europeans were less likely to be able to swim than the locals on Caribbean islands (and Darcy, in his *The People of the Sea*, p.31, a book about Oceania, similarly notes that the ability to swim was commonplace among Fijians, even those who lived well inland). Bruseth and Turner, in *From a Watery Grave*, p.116, attribute the deficiency to the fact that "swimming was not the recreational sport that it is today." | [
"The sailors were wearing their uniforms including heavy boots, which made swimming from the wreck difficult — indeed many men of that time had never had the opportunity to learn. Many songs and poems, such as \"An Iolaire\", describe the women of these men finding their men washed up on the shore the next day. The... |
So what's the upper limit on man-made global warming? | The thing scientists are most worried about is a positive feedback loop in the climate, where if you pass some tipping point, you have runaway warming. I'm not a climate expert, but a positive feedback loop would put the upper limit quite high.
Here's a fake example made up off the top of my head - say at some temperature, the CO2 in limestone (CaCO3) decides it prefers not to be in limestone anymore and prefers to be in a gaseous state. Then, lets say our CO2 takes the temperature right up to this point - then CO2 starts pouring out of the global sources of limestone and then we have more heating and its a runaway positivefeedback loop. It's hard to predict these kinds of things but we want to be safe :D.
Edit: Fixed being stupid. | [
"In 2010, Parties to the UNFCCC agreed that future global warming should be limited to below 2.0 °C (3.6 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level. With the Paris Agreement of 2015 this was confirmed, but was revised with a new target laying down \"parties will do the best\" to achieve warming below 1.5 °C. The curr... |
How were the anarchist/syndicalist (or pro-Republican in general) areas of Spain governed before and during the civil war? Did the militias enforce or enact any laws? Did they police their respective communities? | Governance before the civil war is tricky. The easy answer, of course, is that the Spanish government (whether the left or right was in power) was still in place prior to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, so areas with significant anarchist (or other leftist) presence were being governed by the government. It's not like a village could get away with declaring itself to be an anarchist commune, expropriate the local landlords and stop paying taxes - the Civil Guards existed basically to stop this happening, and were fairly brutal and efficient at stamping this kind of thing out. This does however gloss over the extent to which the Spanish state could often be rather absent in rural areas in the early twentieth century. Indeed, one convincing argument I've seen made about why Spanish anarchism became so strong was that they were the only ones actually making an effort in rural Spain aside from the Catholic Church - they set up local organisations, libraries and education facilities long before the government made any serious effort to provide these kind of services. So, in this sense, 'governance' is a bit of a mixed bag - the government could exert control, but weren't performing many of the 'normal' functions of governance in many of the areas that the anarchists were particularly strong. Particularly in pre-Republican Spain, this was a key driver of anti-clerical feeling - for all intents and purposes, the Church was the only institution of the Spanish state that was actually present across much of rural Spain. This meant that Church institutions and representatives were inevitably politicised, and seen as legitimate targets for political violence in a way that was just about unknown across much of the rest of Europe.
This picture obviously changes after the outbreak of the civil war, and the launch of what is often called the 'Spanish Revolution' in response. This revolution is quite distinctive, as participants were not that concerned with the big institutions of government like parliament, which generally continued to exist as before (albeit without much influence over events in the early weeks and months), but concentrated on seizing local land and means of production, as well as more functional aspects of government like barracks, armouries and telephone exchanges, particularly in Barcelona. This reflected, of course, the ideological preferences of the revolutionaries. But an inevitable result is that it's very hard to speak of a singular experience of the Spanish Revolution, as the methods and aims of different groups varied so widely.
So, even looking at somewhere like Catalonia where this revolutionary process went the furthest in collectivising land and factories, it wasn't like parts of Spain became homogenously anarchist. Some locales, for instance, might have both a socialist and an anarchist collective farm. Even among these collectives, there was a great deal of variance in scale (one collective might have 5,000 inhabitants, another 50) and context (different crops, locations, climate, rules etc). Broadly speaking, collectives were established by local trade unionists (UGT, CNT or both), and delegates were appointed to manage various aspects of the new enterprise, from different types of production (crops, cattle etc) to administration, and the delegates together formed a general council, often responsible in turn to a general assembly of the collective's workers (not, I suspect, including the women), which were sometimes regularly consituted and played a guiding role, and sometimes were irregular gatherings with less of a day to day role. Joining collectives was nominally voluntary for smallholding farmers (and many did indeed choose to do so), but there may have been some coercion involved, and restrictions placed upon those who remained independent, such as not allowing them to employ anyone. How far these collectives remained true to their basic democratic principles, or became small fiefdoms of local dictators, is a more difficult question that is inevitably tainted by wider ideological debates. Individual collectives were also, naturally, variably successful, with some seeing defections, others the participation of self-interested individuals who sought to profit from accumulating goods and produce. Similarly, whether or not production increased as a result of collectivisation tended to rest on local contexts and factors, as well as the wider pressures of the war on the agricultural sector. While I have less direct information about law enforcement as per your question, I suspect it reflects this picture as well - rules and laws would likely have been established and enforced differently, depending on how collectivisation proceeded locally.
The militias themselves were also a bit of a mixed bag. While they did well against often disorganised and confused opponents in the mainly urban battles of the early civil war, the transition to more traditional warfare exposed their lack of training, equipment and organisation, leading to heavy losses and eventually the regularisation of the militias into more traditional military units. In theory at least, the anarchist militias were supposed to be democratic entities. The Durruti Column, one of the earliest anarchist militias formed in Catalonia, was described by one historian as being:
> organised on an anarchist basis, with ten men forming a group, ten groups a *centuria*, all electing their leaders, and five groups an *agrupación*. The leaders of these bodies formed the war committee of the column, which had to approve the decisions of the Technical Military Council, consisting of the few officers who accompanied the militia.
Though the basic formula varied, the election of delegates in this manner appears to have been common. Democracy went beyond the election of leaders. Some anarchist militias refused to participate in what was seen as pointless militarism, such as drilling or being confined to barracks at night. Military orders, particularly in the early months, were often written more as persuasive arguments and justifications than as direct commands, in the knowledge that the latter might be refused on principle. Yet as with collectivisation, there was little conformity or regularity at play here, and some anarchist columns were doubtless little better than bandits. This meant that depending on who the local militia were, the standards of justice you might expect would vary considerably - and if your crime was a political one, even the most principled would not hesitate to use violence.
Your last question about the conflict with communism is a whole other can of worms, which I'll continue below! | [
"At the start of the Civil War, there were two primary anarchist organizations: Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI). Representing working-class people, they set out to prevent the Nationalists from seizing control while also serving as reforming influences inside Sp... |
Questions for Hitler?
| Well, to start, Hitler was chancellor of Germany in 1933: he was running the show in 1933. You want to talk to him in the 1920s, it seems, so:
Do some research on the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923 - that's his first grab for power, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. And while serving his ridiculously lenient jail sentence, he wrote Mein Kampf. I might ask him about the up-and-coming Nazi Party - what he plans to do with it. Ask him about the end of World War I and how he feels about Weimar - he had very strong feelings about these. Ask him about race and struggle - those were the cornerstones of Nazi ideology. | [
"Beginning in February 1924, Hitler was tried for high treason before the special People's Court in Munich. He used his trial as an opportunity to spread his message throughout Germany. At one point during the trial, Hitler discussed political leadership, during which he stated that leading people was not a matter ... |
I'm no expert of either, but there seem to be some key similarities between Ancient Latin and Greek, like the -us/-os and -um/-on endings. They even have the same word for "I." Did either peoples notice the same thing and suspect that their languages could have come from a common source? | ~~I'm not sure which "other people" you are referring to.~~ The Romans thought that Latin was a dialect of Greek. Modern linguists believe that they are both part of the Indo-European language family and therefore have a common linguistic ancestor. [This article](_URL_0_) will probably interest you | [
"Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of the Sanskrit language; both in its vocabulary and grammar; to the classical languages of Europe. It suggested a common root and historical links between some of the major distant ancient languages of the world. William Jones rema... |
Blown up army sizes in Xerxes march on Greece | Hi! You might enjoy the answer I gave to this question [here](_URL_0_). My view is that we need to be thinking about these numbers less in terms of "true or false" and more in terms of "plausible or implausible in a world without written records". In the context of his own work, Herodotos made a lot of effort to justify his numbers, which he probably couldn't have lowered without losing credibility in the eyes of his audience. | [
"General Papagos rushed Greek units to the Metsovon pass where the Germans were expected to attack. On 14 April a pitched battle between several Greek units and the LSSAH brigade—which had by then reached Grevena—erupted. The Greek 13th and Cavalry Divisions lacked the equipment necessary to fight against an armour... |
does mutually assured destruction (ie. nuclear weapons) deter nations into waging war against each other? | Lets see. Why would you start a fight?
You want something that other guy has.
You really hate that guy for whatever reason.
A couple of other reasons exist, but the concept is the same.
Now, if that guy has something that will instantly kill or severely hurt you if you attack him, even if you disable him quickly, you wouldn't start that fight.
You won't be able to use that thing you wanted to have and having acted on your hate is probably less valuable then your life.
No rational decisionmaker would decide to attack an opponent who can with near certainty annihilate him if he tried (unless he has a way to circumvent or disable whatever allows his opponent to do this).
Nuclear weapons make pretty sure that you can't win anything by launching an attack.
#EDIT:
About the second part of your question: It would continue to do so until someone develops a way to prevent his own destruction like a reliable defense system or a way to disable the opposing nation so quickly that it can't launch. | [
"The doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD) assumes that a nuclear deterrent force must be credible and survivable. That is, each deterrent force must survive a first strike with sufficient capability to effectively destroy the other country in a second strike. Therefore, a first strike would be suicidal for ... |
can someone explain the chandraskhar limit in simplistic terminology? | During a star's lifetime, the outward pressure exerted from all of the thermal energy being created by fusion in the core holds the volume of the star up against the force of gravity created by all of that mass. When a star uses up its nuclear fusion fuel supply, there's a number of end scenarios that can play out, and which one happens generally depends on the mass of the star.
One of the possible end results is something called a white dwarf. The fusion has shut down, and so that thermal pressure stops, and the star begins to contract due to gravity. This continues and the star gets increasingly dense until something called [electron degeneracy pressure](_URL_0_) stops it. Long story short, at a quantum level, mass resists getting smashed together even denser, and the force of this resistance is called Electron degeneracy pressure.
So in a white dwarf, electron degeneracy pressure holds the star at a particular volume, and assuming no other significant celestial bodies influence it, the white dwarf just sort of hangs out in the universe, slowly radiating away all its residual heat.
But that only happens to most stars. Some stars have so much mass, and create so much gravity, that that inward collapsing is stronger than electron degeneracy pressure. That amount of mass is called the Chandraskhar Limit. If a dying star has more mass than that limit, then it'll contract past the white dwarf stage, and proceed on to a neutron star, or maybe a quark star (we're not sure if those exist), or even a black hole if it's massive enough. | [
"The limiter function is constrained to be greater than or equal to zero, i.e., formula_11. Therefore, when the limiter is equal to zero (sharp gradient, opposite slopes or zero gradient), the flux is represented by a \"low resolution scheme\". Similarly, when the limiter is equal to 1 (smooth solution), it is repr... |
how is it possible that we can have orgasms in our sleep, without any physical stimuli? | All physical sensation is just impulses interpreted by the brain. No need for the actual stimuli, just need the part of the brain that responds to the stimuli to activate.
Same idea as starting a car. The conventional way is to use a key to start the engine. You can bypass the key by hot wiring it (or so movies have led me to believe). Your brain is hot wiring your sexy time centers, bypassing the physical stimulation. | [
"In addition to physical stimulation, orgasm can be achieved from psychological arousal alone, such as during dreaming (nocturnal emission for males or females) or by forced orgasm. Orgasm by psychological stimulation alone was first reported among people who had spinal cord injury. Although sexual function and sex... |
The Great War: African Theatre Literature? | Hew Strachan tackles Africa in his "The First World War," volume 1. I believe you can buy those sections as one unit on Amazon. He'd be a good place to start. I suggest mining the references and going from there. | [
"Charles Miller (1918 – 1986) was an American author of popular history books on East Africa such as \"The Lunatic Express, An Entertainment in Imperialism\" (1971) and \"Battle for the Bundu, The First World War in East Africa\" (1974).\n",
"The African Theatre of World War I describes campaigns in North Africa ... |
how dubstep/rap artists can manipulate the computer/synthesizer to get the beat/sound the way they want it? | Well they use specific programs designed to augment sound waves. It started out with having the change the actual circuitry of the physical device to produce such sounds, now you can literally just layer loops and press play, if your a lazy fuck. | [
"BULLET::::- Vinyl emulation software allows a DJ to manipulate the playback of digital music files on a computer via a DJ control surface (generally MIDI or a HID controller). DJs can scratch, beatmatch, and perform other turntablist operations that cannot be done with a conventional keyboard and mouse. DJ softwar... |
when i shower and someone runs water, i freeze. hotels? 100's of showers, no such problem. | Hotels have ridiculous tankless water heaters that flash heat water in-line, so they don't retain a huge tank of water like most household water heaters. If your house is older, it probably isn't plumbed very well and/or you have a small/inefficient water heater. | [
"Detainees generally are subject to a daily shower convention: shower takes place by the sink in each cell (sink provides only cold water). Showers are typically allowed after dinner without regard for seasonality. This daily shower is considered a “cell” rule. The detention center provides weekly hot shower but su... |
Question about North American arrow heads. | In areas where natural copper could be found the nuggets were cold worked by natives into a variety of tools including arrowheads. One of these areas was located around the Great Lakes and is called the Old Copper Complex. Copper arrowheads and other tools were also used in Alaska and the Yukon.
The use of copper was completely dependent on the availability of naturally occurring copper that did not need to be smelted. | [
"Lamoka projectile points are stone projectile points manufactured by Native Americans what is now the northeastern United States, generally in the time interval of 3500-2500 B.C. They predate the invention of the bow and arrow, and are therefore not true \"arrowheads\", but rather atlatl dart points. They derive t... |
Why can extreme hot weather cause mass power outages/blackouts? | The main reason is that electricity usage is highest during heat waves, because everyone's air conditioning is running at full blast.
There's a second less important reason, which is that fossil fuel and nuclear power plants are less efficient in hot weather. They use outside air and/or water to cool their steam back to water to recycle back into the plant, and that doesn't work as well on a hot day.
In fact, it turns out there's a theorem of thermodynamics that says that the maximum possible efficiency of both heat engines (power plant) and refrigerators (air conditioners) is worse when the outside air is warmer.
_URL_0_ | [
"Power outages can also occur within areas experiencing heat waves due to the increased demand for electricity (i.e. air conditioning use). The urban heat island effect can increase temperatures, particularly overnight.\n",
"Thousands of power outages were reported in Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, repor... |
modern sociology claims that race is a social construct devoid of any biological foundation. if so, how does forensic science work, or anthropological dna-based migrational studies? | There are no sociological characteristics that correspond 1:1 with skin color, which is how "race" is determined in the United States. That is not to say that skin color is not a biological trait that is passed from generation to generation. Rather, it simply means that behavioral traits we associate with certain races are not genetically linked to the phenotypical traits we use to define those races.
It may be true that the genes that facilitate becoming a violin virtuoso are disproportionately found among people whose ancestors come from Asia. But these genes are not linked in any way to something like epicanthic folds. Also, genes for dark skin are dominant over genes for fair skin, but other, invisible genes from a white parent may be dominant over those from a black parent. Thus, we see Barack Obama as the first black President because we key in on what we can see, but he's just as white as he is black. We call Tiger Woods a great black golfer, but investigate his racial heritage. I think he is actually 1/4 black. These are the kinds of things that sociologists mean when they say race is a social construction.
Many sociology professors articulate this poorly, partly because it is a very abstract concept, and partly because they aren't in the business of explaining abstract concepts, but rather in political indoctrination. But I'm a sociologist and I don't want to indoctrinate anyone and I assure you that skin color is not a primary characteristic that geneticists use to identify haplogroups.
NEVERTHELESS, lumping people together into a social group will cause them to behave in reaction to society as if they are a "real" group. Affirmative action is not an attempt to ameliorate problems caused by skin color. These policies are designed to ameliorate problems caused by people who think that skin color means something more than how far from the equator your ancestors were when they evolved. | [
"Through this small sampling of experts, it is clear that race as a social construction is a common theory. All of the experts in this sampling say that biological race is non-existent. Race therefore must have been created by societies. They were created to do what humans do, to serve the purposes of the majority.... |
why do things we do on the internet begin with "e-" instead of "i" for internet? | "e-" stands for "electronic".
Regular mail is sent on physical paper, but "e-mail" is sent *electronically*. It's "e(lectronic) mail". | [
"\"Online\" has come to describe activities performed on and data available on the Internet, for example: \"online identity\", \"online predator\", \"online gambling\", \"online shopping\", \"online banking\", and \"online learning\". Similar meaning is also given by the prefixes \"cyber\" and \"e\", as in the word... |
How did cups become a symbol for victory? | hi! always room for more info on this, but you can get started on this earlier post
* [Why are trophies often cups?](_URL_0_) - featuring responses from /u/TheJucheisLoose and /u/ConventionalAlias
if you have follow-up questions on this locked post, ask them here & page the relevant user by including their username | [
"The Cup is made of pure silver. On the top part of the Cup there is the inscription \"OLYMPIC GAMES 1896, MARATHON TROPHY DONATED BY MICHAEL BREAL\". The remaining surface of the Cup had a relief decoration depicting birds and aquatic plants, which were known to exist in the swamp lands of Marathon in ancient time... |
if i leave the milky way, am i immediately in another galaxy or in a big empty part of space with different galaxies to choose from? | There are large empty spaces between galaxies that have almost no matter in them at all. Except maybe dark matter, but we still don't understand that well | [
"In 2014 researchers reported that most satellite galaxies of the Milky Way actually lie in a very large disk and orbit in the same direction. This came as a surprise: according to standard cosmology, the satellite galaxies should form in dark matter halos, and they should be widely distributed and moving in random... |
why can't doctors diagnose cte in a living person? | Because the physical degeneration thought to be involved in CTE can only be observed in autopsies. It doesn't really show readily or conclusively is regular brain scans which look for neuron activity or chemical processes. Cracking open a living person's skull soley for research or diagnosis purposes in a very risky surgery is a rather tough sell for an ethical comittee. | [
"Where it is readily available, computed tomography (CT) has become frequently used, especially in people whose diagnosis is not obvious on history and physical examination. Concerns about radiation tend to limit use of CT in pregnant women and children, especially with the increasingly widespread usage of MRI.\n",... |
if clouds are water in a gaseous state (aren't they?), why aren't they at a greater than boiling temperature, and is evaporating water boiling? | Let me try to put this in a 5YO level of understanding.
Remember when it was December and you went outside and you could see your breath? That was water vapor. The water inside you was not boiling. If it was, you would have been boiling, and we don't want that to happen.
Remember in the summer when you felt that cold water pipe and there was water droplets on it? The pipe was cold, but there was cold water drops on it.
Then in the fall when I took you camping and you saw the mist over the lake when I woke you up to go fishing. You saw the mist even though it was too cold for you to get out of your sleeping bag.
Clouds work the same way. The cold air can hold water vapor. For reasons that will have to wait until you get into a good college, warm air can hold more water vapor. The thing is that the water vapor wants to hang out together in colder areas. If the air gets full enough of this water vapor, you see clouds. The warmer the air is, the higher the clouds will have to be, usually.
There is still a lot of stuff about atmospheric pressure and transference of heat that you will have to ask your mother about, but why not, it's Mother's Day. Go wake her up while I make breakfast. | [
"Water vapor, water vapour or aqueous vapor is the gaseous phase of water. It is one state of water within the hydrosphere. Water vapor can be produced from the evaporation or boiling of liquid water or from the sublimation of ice. Unlike other forms of water, water vapor is invisible. Under typical atmospheric con... |
is x86 software made for 32-bit os or 64-bit? | If it just says x86 then it is probably 32-bit. It will still work just fine, but unless you have a reason otherwise, you should typically get the 64-bit version, which should be labeled x86_64. | [
"Modern x86 is relatively uncommon in embedded systems, however, and small low power applications (using tiny batteries) as well as low-cost microprocessor markets, such as home appliances and toys, lack any significant x86 presence. Simple 8-bit and 16-bit based architectures are common here, although the x86-comp... |
what is the simplest way to explain gauss' law and how its used? (algebra based physics) thank you in advance | You can tell how much charge is in an enclosed space by looking at the electric field along the boundary. | [
"One of the main practical uses of the Gaussian law is to model the empirical distributions of many different random variables encountered in practice. In such case a possible extension would be a richer family of distributions, having more than two parameters and therefore being able to fit the empirical distribut... |
Was the Sherman tank a name resented by US soldiers from the south during WWII? | If this question isn't relevant, feel free to remove mods.
Given the nicknames M3 Lee, M3 Stuart, M3 Grant, and M4 Sherman, why were Union and Confederate general names given to tanks, or any modern weapons for that matter? | [
"The M4 was the best known and most used American tank of World War II. Christened \"Sherman\" by the British, it was named for the famous US Civil War General, William Tecumseh Sherman. The M4 Sherman was a medium tank that proved itself in the Allied operations in North Africa, Europe and the Pacific theaters of ... |
Do we really know anything about Mayan warfare? | Maya records do give us a good look at the nature of (and possible motivations for) a variety of military endeavors. Let's take a look at a few.
* Palenque and Calakmul were two of the many pairs of constantly competing city states, located just south of the Tabasco region in southern Mexico. Sometime around 608 AD, Palenque, led by Ajen Yol Mat, began expanding it's control to the northeast, towards the direction of Calakmul. Calakmul's rulers, who styled themselves "snake lords," did not take very kindly to this. The Lord Scroll Serpent retaliated in 610 AD and for months sacked (the Mayan verb is literally "axed") cities on his route to Palenque itself. In these battles, Ajen Yol Mat and and brother/second in command Janab' Pakal the Elder were killed, and Palenque would be in its darkest days.
* During this troublesome period, in 603, a fellow named K'inich Janaab' Pakal 1 ("Sacred Flower Shield the First") was born. The aforementioned deaths of so many royals left him as the next best candidate for succession, even if it was a matrilineal claim. His mother, Ix Sak K'uk', effectively ruled from 615 until the young king was capable. K'nicich Janaab' Pakal 1 would become Palenque's greatest ruler, reigning 68 years, constructing its most impressive monuments, and, of course, executing successful military campaigns. Around 650, Janaab' Pakal began reasserting Palenque's northern and eastern frontiers. Yet again, Calakmul got cranky and marched towards Palenque, "axing" it once more in 654. But it was not the same degree of blow as before, and Palenque quickly retaliated, capturing Calakmul's allied city Pomona, sacrificing its leaders, and installing member
s of Palenque's own dynasty on the throne.
* Yaxchilan, to the southwest of Palenque, was one of the first sites to have a mostly complete timeline of rulers established. One anomaly, though, sticks out. One ruler, Shield Jaguar 1, died on December 1, 741. The next ruler would not be seated on the throne until May 3, 752. This man called himself Bird-Jaguar IV, was the sun of a "Lady Eveningstar," and, curiously, appears nowhere in the records until his accession. Even curioser: we know that Lady Eveiningstar was from Calakmul and a secondary wife of Shield Jaguar 1, most likely a political marriage. But Shield Jaguar's Queen consort, Lady Xoc, was an incredibly popular and powerful woman; why should her son not rule? Well, if we look at Bird Jaguar IV's activities, it's clear that he was purveying an enormous amount of propaganda: inserting himself into historical scenes, showing him and his mother alongside important individuals doing rituals, and comminsioning images of him capturing all varieties of enemies. Bird Jaguar IV's name is also frequently followed by numerous titles: "Captor of Lord Jeweled Skull," "He of 20 Captives," and "Captor of Aj Uk." (A rather common tradition) He uses these titles from the very beginning of his reign, before he could have led many military campaigns. And over at Piedras Negras, a rival of Yaxchilan, we find an inscription showing a captured noble from between 741 and 752, a noble many consider to be the missing son of Lady Xoc. Put this together, and we have a picture of a Classic Maya *Game of Thrones*: queens, brothers, and some opportunist neighbors vying for succession after the death of a highly successful king.
As you can see, military efforts in the Classic Maya lowlands were often quite political. Kingdoms were competing over land and influence over surrounding, smaller towns. Nobles were competing for thrones when succession was unsure. And in each situation, the victors were taking important figures captive and sacrificing them, and then gracing themselves with titles of "Captor." | [
"Warfare was prevalent in the Maya world. Military campaigns were launched for a variety of reasons, including the control of trade routes and tribute, raids to take captives, scaling up to the complete destruction of an enemy state. Little is known about Maya military organization, logistics, or training. Warfare ... |
Why was North Vietnam able to field such a massive army that easily over-ran the south when the Americans left? Why did the south not have a more capable or large enough army to hold them off? | [I've answered this previously in this thread.](_URL_0_)
The period we're going to speak about is completely focused on conventional warfare, as opposed to the asymmetrical warfare in which the Vietnam War (the American portion of it) had largely been fought. With the exception of two major occasions, the Tét offensive in 1968 and the Nguyen Hue (Easter) Offensive in 1972, the People's Army of (North) Vietnam and the Army of the Republic of (South) Vietnam (henceforth abridged as PAVN and ARVN) had never truly faced of against each other in a conventional battle. In fact, one of the main reasons for the ARVN's failure in conducting proper counterinsurgency is that it had been trained since 1955 to repel an expected invasion from the North. When the time came for the PAVN to face off against ARVN in the Easter Offensive of 1972, the PAVN suffered several losses and was ultimately beaten back by the ARVN with help from American fire support. The PAVN had yet to perfect combined arms tactics and suffered greatly because of it. The ordinary ARVN soldier, who is usually the scorn of popular history on the Vietnam War, labelled as nothing but incompetent and coward soldiers, showed remarkable courage and fighting ability in fighting the Tét offensive (alongside American troops) and the Easter Offensive (practically on their own with American advisors or special forces).
So if the ARVN had managed to fight off the PAVN in 1972, what went so disastrously wrong in 1975?
There are several reasons for this.
The Americans had left Vietnam two years previously and while all equipment and machinery had been left behind for the South Vietnamese to use, they were practically useless without ammunition or spare parts - items which the US were not prepared to supply. While President Gerald Ford tried to gain support in Congress to increase the money given to South Vietnam, the ARVN found itself in an ammunition shortage. Since the US were not prepared to help South Vietnam with fire support like in the previous two conventional encounters, it would be an increasingly difficult task to stem the tide of North Vietnamese crossing the DMZ. The PAVN was also superior in numbers, having increased in size and improved itself during late 1973, but which had been constantly developing since 1968. PAVN had several veteran units, and plenty of soldiers in the PAVN had combat experience and were of rather high quality. Unlike the 1972 offensive, combined tactics training had been carried out and improvement on collaboration had been achieved. Combine this with competent generals and commanders in the field as well as sound and proper preparation for the offensive (in particular when it came to logistics and transportation) as well as the successful use of deception tactics to disguise that Ban Me Thuot was the target of the initial 1975 offensive.
The ARVN by this time was unfortunately still plagued with the corruption of senior officers and with widespread lack of proper training. However, when put to the test, the average ARVN soldier could stand his ground. To say that the North crushed the South instantly is perhaps too much of an exaggeration. ARVN stood its ground on plenty of battlefields, right up to the end at Xuan Loc. However, we have to consider the human factor in this and many soldiers feared for possible reprisals. Considering the importance of family in Vietnamese culture, it was only natural for men to desert to seek up their family amongst the refugees, but there are also plenty of ARVN soldiers who used the thought of protecting their families as their prime motivations in fighting.
In the end, it was simply too much for an already weakened ARVN. Without fire support, without the necessary equipment, spare parts or ammunition and with the enemy close to their families, it became too much for them to bear. After the fall of Ban Me Thuot President Thieu decided to evacuate the Central Highlands and effectively cut South Vietnam in two. The final collapse came soon thereafter.
To read more on this and the 1975 offensive, I'd recommend Gorge J. Veith's *Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam 1974-75*. | [
"In 1965, the United States rapidly increased its military forces in South Vietnam, prompted by the realization that the South Vietnamese government was losing the Vietnam War as the communist-dominated Viet Cong gained influence over much of the population in rural areas of the country. North Vietnam also rapidly ... |
i often hear how states around the country are hemorrhaging due to the lack of teachers, why isn't there a greater demand for teachers? | There is a demand in terms of students who need teachers. But the lack is due to the budgets of the states, who tend to undervalue teachers, as is traditional. | [
"Moreover, a lack of governmental legislation and intervention can be to blame. In parts of South America (with the exception of Chile and Colombia), there are no laws that make physical education compulsory: thus, it is omitted from many schools.\n",
"The problems of state's education system are complex. Due to ... |
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