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Perceptions of officer's promoted from the ranks in the British army during the Napoleonic War | The more usual way for an officer to rise in ranks would in those days be through literally buying his commission. u/GeneralLeeBlount explains [in this thread, also asking about Sharpe.](_URL_1_) It also examines how they'd look at the men, and therefore, Sharpe. It must be noted that this system was not universal throughout the entire British Army at the time; u/Bacarruda and u/Andy_R00 [comment on non-purchased commissions here.](_URL_0_)
I highly recommend picking up the books the TV movies are based on. The films are rather low-budget and really suffer in depicting the larger battles Sharpe finds himself in. Bernard Cornwell, the original author, still 'Hollywoodises' the actions Sharpe finds himself in, but he does include a historical note as to what he's done that was counter to reality. | [
"General Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill, (11 August 1772 – 10 December 1842) was a British Army officer who served in the Napoleonic Wars as a trusted brigade, division and corps commander under the command of the Duke of Wellington. He became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in 1828.\n",
"On 8 July 1814, ... |
why do tan lines become more visible in the shower? | Because the water on your skin changes the way light reflects off of it. You know how when, say, your hand is wet, it looks shiny? Well, shiny pale skin emphasizes the lightness while shiny darker skin doesn't appear much lighter than normal. Presto -- your neon white ass seems even whiter in comparison. | [
"A tan line is a visually clear division on the human skin between an area of pronounced comparative paleness relative to other areas that have been suntanned by exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The source of the radiation may be the sun, or artificial UV sources such as tanning lamps. Tan lines are usually ... |
Is it more difficult for our body to digest food if we are laying on our side as compared to sitting upright? | No. The digestive tract is a series of closed tubes that squeeze their contents tightly. They push their contents further down the tract according to regular muscle movement, and the way behind the ball of food is closed off by these same muscles.
Gravity plays no significant factor in the way food moves through your digestive tract. In fact, the intestines are so coiled that they point in every random direction, including up and sideways, regardless of how your body itself is oriented. | [
"Sitting is a basic human resting position. The body weight is supported primarily by the buttocks in contact with the ground or a horizontal object such as a chair seat. The torso is more or less upright. Sitting for much of the day may pose significant health risks, and people who sit regularly for prolonged peri... |
After the Gracchi brothers were able to distribute the land to the urban poor, what did the poor do with it and how did this impact roman society? | First let me say that the primary literary sources for this time period are positively lousy. Appian -- don't even get me started. And the other often-cited source is Plutarch, who is also no Thucydides or Polybios, to say the least. With that in mind...
The original land legislation brought by Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BCE specifically stipulated that the land awarded to the poor could not be (re)sold. We are very much in the dark about the specifics of this plan. It was to be carried out by a three-man commission (of senators, *tresviri agris iudicandis adsignandis*), and was to deal both with new allotments and with public land already being occupied, both below and beyond the "legal" limit of such occupation. We don't know what exactly the legal status of the land was to be in either case, we don't know what the criteria of eligibility was for the new allotments (could non-Romans participate?), and we don't know how much land was allotted total or in each case. There is some inscription evidence from 22 years later, the "tabula Bembina," which records a portion of a law ending the (now modified) commission in 111 BCE. It declares all the land distributed by the commission to be, finally, officially private property and subject to the Roman census. This suggests that it was not private property up to this point, but remained technically *ager publicus.* Further, the law seems to recognize the *current* owners of the land allotments, suggesting that they were able to be bequeathed to relatives (or others?) in the period between 133 and 111 BCE.
After the death of Tiberius, the literary sources tell us that further legislation allowed the lands to be sold by their new "owners." This doesn't seem to jive with the tabula Bembina, and I'm inclined to side with the inscription over Appian (sorry Mr. Appian; no offense intended). It seems likely that Gaius Gracchus, after his brother's death, legislated that the allotted lands be subject to rent (that is, that they were *ager publicus* and those occupying had to pay rent to the State to use it). The law of 111 would have then invalidated that, possibly.
Things are even more thorny when we consider Romans vs "allies" (non-Roman Italians). The legislation served, in part, to punish those who had been occupying more than the "legal" limit of Roman *ager publicus* in Italy. The vast majority of this land was not near Rome, but was scattered throughout Italy. Most of that land had been occupied, it seems, by the non-Roman Italians for decades, if not centuries. These 'landowners,' big and small, were almost certainly the big losers in the Gracchan legislation. If we understand it all correctly, they suffered a net loss of land (and probably a gigantic amount) and, probably, the "poor" Italians got none back in return. The result was the removal of land from the allies en mass. The Latins, at least, had the right of *commercium* and could theoretically benefit from the allotments, since they could own Roman property. The allies, as foreigners (*peregrini*), could not, and it is hard to imagine how they would have received allotments. Some point to this as a major factor in the outbreak of the Social War a few decades later, when the Italian allies rose up and tried to replace Rome as the hegemon of Italia.
Roman senators were also big losers in the deal. Many of them, like Scipio Nasica, allegedly held gigantic swaths of public land had done so for generations. The powerful Metelli, also, were not happy, nor was Q. Pompeius. It's no wonder Tiberius was killed. Still, his place on the commission was filled again and it seems to have gone forward with its mandate, despite powerful enemies. Still, we have no idea how successful the commission actually was. There is archaeological evidence of its surveying activity in Italy, especially boundary stones and monuments with the names of the *tresviri.* There *was* an increase in the census data, almost 75,000 new registered persons by 125, and that seems to me to suggest that the commission was doing some serious allotting. | [
"Shortages of land for the poor was a significant problem during the Roman Republic. Roman citizens were given plots of lands of two iugera from the ager publicus. These were barely sufficient to feed a family. The rich landowners acquired large estates by encroaching on public land, which reduced the amount of thi... |
What are the most important things we don't know about history? | Things that we know we don't know:
The universal principle underlying the development of languages. Once a language is developed we're pretty good at figuring out how they work and develop, but not the bit that comes before that.
The cause of the development of cities, and the factors leading up to that. It may sound surprising but we really don't understand what led to cities being made.
The reason why an alphabetic script was developed in 1900 BC in the Levant for the first time, and not at a different time or different place.
The nature of Minoan society. You may have heard of many theories about the Minoan culture, but other than what archaeology can tell we really know little about them.
There are several languages we cannot currently read. The Minoan Linear A script is one, Luwian is one that we can almost read but it's something of a struggle.
Those are the big mysteries that occur to me right now. | [
"Nothing is more concrete than history, nothing less interested in theories or in abstract ideas. The great historians have fewer ideas about history than amateurs do; they merely have a way of ordering their facts to tell their story. It isn’t theories they look for, but information, documents, and ideas about how... |
if apple engineers can create the tool requested by the fbi to "create a backdoor" into ios, why haven't the best hackers already done it? | Even if Apple were to make a whole new iOS that bypasses the limit on the number of passcode attempts, how could they install this software on a locked, encrypted phone? Do iPhones have a vulnerability where a new OS could be pushed to it without the owners consent? | [
"On March 21 2016, the government requested and was granted a delay, saying a third party had demonstrated a possible way to unlock the iPhone in question and the FBI needed more time to determine if it will work. On March 28 2016, the FBI said it had unlocked the iPhone with the third party's help, and an anonymou... |
why are firearm variants sometimes address with mk? | It's short for mark, which is essentially a synonym for "version" or "type."
I.e. the Ruger Mk II (pronounced "mark two") is the second version of the Ruger pistol. | [
"C&R firearms include most manually operated and semi-automatic firearms used by a military force prior to 1970. This includes most firearms used by the warring nations in World War I and World War II. However, the firearm must normally also be in its original configuration to retain the C&R designation. So, for ex... |
What is the purpose of the fuzz on a peach? | Fuzz on a peach helps to be protected from infection, which is called brown rot. It is the cause of putrefaction of fruits in those places where the skin is damaged. Therefore, if peach more shaggy, it is stored longer! | [
"Ponzu is made by simmering mirin, rice vinegar, \"katsuobushi\" flakes (from tuna), and seaweed (kombu) over medium heat. The liquid is then cooled, strained to remove the \"katsuobushi\" flakes, and finally the juice of one or more of the following citrus fruits is added: \"yuzu\", \"sudachi\", \"daidai\", \"kabo... |
why is english the universal language when its also one of the most complex aswell? | English's complexity also makes it extremely flexible. You don't have to speak English well to be understood by most other English speakers. | [
"English is often considered to be the lingua franca of the world today due to the diversity of countries and communities that have adopted English as a national, commercial, or social form of communication. Globalization, colonialism, and the capitalist system have all helped promote English as the world's dominan... |
When food particles get stuck between our teeth, what causes the surrounding gum to swell up and become tender ? | Short answer: Inflammation.
Long answer: It causes a bit of damage to the gums, which leads to our immune system mounting a response. Things like tenderness and swelling are general parts of the inflammatory response. It's really the same as if you got a scratch on your arm and you get that painful pink welt. | [
"Food impaction occurs when food debris, especially fibrous food such as meat, becomes trapped between two teeth and is pushed into the gums during chewing. The usual cause of food impaction is disruption of the normal interproximal contour or drifting of teeth so that a gap is created (an open contact). Decay can ... |
What is responsible for the colorful visual disturbances associated with a "head rush" from standing up quickly? | The head rush from standing up quickly is from orthostatic hypotension. It takes time for the baroreceptors of the heart to trigger a response to this increased work load. Drop of blood pressure in the eyes, know as hypotony affects the retina, which must maintain a pressure from 6-12mmHg (maybe 15) to function properly.
Rubbing your eyes causes compression on the retina, which fires some cones/rods. | [
"Oscillopsia is a visual disturbance in which objects in the visual field appear to oscillate. The severity of the effect may range from a mild blurring to rapid and periodic jumping. Oscillopsia is an incapacitating condition experienced by many patients with neurological disorders. It may be the result of ocular ... |
how did europe become "richer" than other continents? | This isn't a question to be answered in one small text box. There are many contributing factors. As a World History teacher, I'll just give you a few of the main reasons.
1.) Great Britain was the first to industrialize. Once they moved from the cottage industry to the factory system they gained immense masses of wealth. The Industrial Revolution quickly spread to surrounding European nations and the United States.
2.) Needing more natural resources to feed their factories, the Western European nations went on an imperialistic bombardment, mostly in Africa. This continued to feed them with more natural resources while keeping the Africans down. The United States was doing the same in the Caribbean.
3.) Due to mass competition among European nations they've been at war since the Greek Empire. Europe is a very small space relative to the Americas, Africa, and Asia so people lived closer to other groups of people. Since Europeans have constantly been fighting each other since the Classical period, they're been forced to innovate weapons at a quicker rate to stay alive.
Hope this helps. | [
"Between the 12th and 15th centuries the European economy was transformed by the interconnecting of river and sea trade routes, causing Europe to become one of the world's most prosperous trading networks.\n",
"As a continent, the economy of Europe is currently the largest on Earth and it is the richest region as... |
how do they do "stop motion" commercials? | I get what you mean, but I'll inform you anyway that stop-motion is different. Stop-motion videos are when you take snapshots like pictures and string them together, like how to make claymation videos.
This kind of cinematography requires a bunch of cameras in a line, all operating at the same time.
Imagine a ball bouncing, with 100 cameras in a ring, all focused on the ball. Every camera will record an entire video of the ball falling. But if you choose which camera to take footage from, and you go around the ring of cameras, you get the same video of a ball bouncing from a continuously-changing perspective, in this case a full 360 degree video.
Here's a video: _URL_0_ | [
"Debuted in 2015, these ads employ a satire of the technique of frame freezing, by showing live actors attempting to mimic a freeze-frame, often in awkward positions and sometimes assisted by intentionally visible stunt tools, such as suspension cords when paused in mid-air. The premise is that when viewing ads on ... |
why the collor of the reproductive organs are different than the skin? | There are a variety of reasons.
Things that stretch have a different color because the tissue needs to stretch.
Things that get wet have a different color because they have different cell types.
And some things simply have contrasting color because they’re meant to be seen. This color contrast is evolutionarily used in reproductive signaling.
Really, most of the reproductive structures are a combination of some or all of the above. | [
"Male reproductive organs are scattered over the thallus's dorsal surface, while female organs are specifically placed near a bifurcation of the frond. The pseudoperianth, a tube of thallus tissue protecting the archegonia, is basally fused with the calyptra. Following fertilization, the sporophyte is enveloped by ... |
What would happen if you were hit by the Oh-My-God particle? | Most likely: not much on the grand scale. On average, only a tiny fraction of the inital particle's energy will be deposited into your body, so I don't think you would notice it. It will definitely not feel like being hit by a fastball...
Some molecules on its trajectory through you will be ionised on the way, which will possibly damage some cells and DNA strands, but that happens all the time anyway, so it's not a big deal.
| [
"BULLET::::- October 15 – the \"Oh-My-God particle\", the first ultra-high-energy cosmic ray measured at an energy of (40,000,000 times that of the highest energy protons that have been produced in a particle accelerator), is observed at the University of Utah HiRes observatory in Dugway Proving Ground, Utah.\n",
... |
What are the trades and services that should be available in a big late medieval town? | A handy reference is the list of [livery companies of London](_URL_0_), many of which have their roots in medieval guilds. Obviously not the Honourable Company of Air Pilots (unless you're running some kind of really extravagant clockpunk campaign?), but after number 50 or so the list is roughly ranked in order of origin date of company. So you can draw the line pretty much wherever you want.
It definitely skews towards artisans--you won't see things like innkeeper, tavern operator, prostitute, sellers of secondhand goods. There are also distinctions that were made in the Middle Ages not visible--like, in Rouen, the guild of drapers for clothing made with new fabric were serious rivals of the guild of drapers for clothing made with secondhand fabric.
But it should help you fill in some worldbuilding-type details. :) | [
"There are many such associated trades guilds, such as the Incorporation of Bakers, one of the fourteen Incorporated Trades of Glasgow, who meet in their Robert Adam designed Trades Hall. In the medieval town of Orvieto, bakers were one of the thirty-one organized crafts. Now largely ceremonial and charitable, thes... |
What is the white cloud behind an object when it breaks the speed of sound? | It's condensed water from the air in the vicinity of the shock wave where the pressure has dropped significantly enough to cool the air and condense water vapor.
| [
"The disturbance in the jet is a symmetric vortex ring that moves at some speed slower than the mean jet speed until it encounters the hole and some fluid is forced through it, resulting in a monopole-like sound field in the half space outside. The oscillatory volumetric flow in the hole sends a wave back to the or... |
when i wear my glasses instead of contacts, everything looks smaller. books look smaller. people look thinner. is it the lenses, or am i seeing correctly when i wear those glasses? | The further away the lens is the smaller stuff through it looks. Try looking through your glasses as you move them away from your face and you will see that everything gets smaller. And as contacts are the same as your glasses, but closer to your eyes, the effect is much smaller. | [
"Reading glasses are single vision lenses designed for near work, and include over the counter glasses. They come in two main styles: full frames, in which the entire lens is made in the reading prescription, and half-eyes, style glasses that sit lower down on the nose. Full frame readers must be removed to see dis... |
what would happen if skyscrapers didn't have lightning rods? | Lightning would still strike the building, and find some alternate path of least resistance to earth. Meaning that roof mounted antennas, air conditioners, maybe sewage vents would be the next likely target. This could potentially damage equipment either on the roof, the wiring in the building or even start a fire.
Maybe in some situations, even kill people. Snopes has some examples of that.
_URL_0_ | [
"As buildings become taller, lightning becomes more of a threat. Lightning can damage structures made of most materials, such as masonry, wood, concrete and steel, because the huge currents and voltages involved can heat materials to high temperature, causing a potential for fire.\n",
"The majority of lightning p... |
A flu shot is a vaccine, right? But they seem to be far less reliable than other vaccines (I know many people who get flu shots each year then get the flu). What is the reason for this, and are flu shots really that important? | > A flu shot is a vaccine, right?
Yes.
> What is the reason for this
CDC has addressed some misconceptions:
> > What about people who get a seasonal flu vaccine and still get sick with flu symptoms?
> > There are several reasons why someone might get a flu symptoms, even after they have been vaccinated against flu.
> > * One reason is that some people can become ill from other respiratory viruses besides flu such as rhinoviruses, which are associated with the common cold, cause symptoms similar to flu, and also spread and cause illness during the flu season. The flu vaccine only protects against influenza, not other illnesses.
* Another explanation is that it is possible to be exposed to influenza viruses, which cause the flu, shortly before getting vaccinated or during the two-week period after vaccination that it takes the body to develop immune protection. This exposure may result in a person becoming ill with flu before protection from the vaccine takes effect.
> * A third reason why some people may experience flu like symptoms despite getting vaccinated is that they may have been exposed to a flu virus that is very different from the viruses the vaccine is designed to protect against. The ability of a flu vaccine to protect a person depends largely on the similarity or “match” between the viruses selected to make the vaccine and those spreading and causing illness. There are many different flu viruses that spread and cause illness among people. For more information, see Influenza (Flu) Viruses.
> * The final explanation for experiencing flu symptoms after vaccination is that the flu vaccine can vary in how well it works and some people who get vaccinated may still get sick.
...
> are flu shots really that important?
I think the flu vs flu shot answers this the best:
> > Is it better to get the flu than the flu vaccine?
> > No. Flu can be a serious disease, particularly among young children, older adults, and people with certain chronic health conditions, such as asthma, heart disease or diabetes. Any flu infection can carry a risk of serious complications, hospitalization or death, even among otherwise healthy children and adults. Therefore, getting vaccinated is a safer choice than risking illness to obtain immune protection.
_URL_0_
Feel free to check out r/ID_News for infectious disease news. | [
"Influenza vaccines, also known as flu shots or flu jabs, are vaccines that protect against infection by influenza viruses. A new version of the vaccine is developed twice a year, as the influenza virus rapidly changes. While their effectiveness varies from year to year, most provide modest to high protection again... |
What is the differences between asteroids, comets, and meteors? | A meteor is the flash of light you see when an asteroid (or "meteoroid" if you're really picky, which just refers to a "small asteroid") hits our atmosphere and burns up. The resulting debris, if any, is a meteorite.
Asteroids and comets mainly differ by what orbit they're in - comets pass very close to the Sun at once end of their orbit, and as such are seen to give the classic cometary tail. Traditionally it's been said that comets are icy and asteroids are rocky, but the actual border is very fuzzy and confused. | [
"Asteroids are differentiated from comets and meteoroids. In the case of comets, the difference is one of composition: while asteroids are mainly composed of mineral and rock, comets are primarily composed of dust and ice. Furthermore, asteroids formed closer to the sun, preventing the development of cometary ice. ... |
This question usually results in massive flamewars on other subs, so I'll ask you guys: What evidence is there that Jesus of Nazareth ever existed? | Sparse mentions in Roman sources, starting from the early 2nd century. Generally, the Christian record (the gospels & some apocrypha) offers better proof of his existence than the pagan ones, being earlier and more comprehensive. The argument for denying Jesus ever existed is that he was a figure entirely invented by early Christians (Paul?), but that appears far-fetched and laboured a theory at best. | [
"Although there is no mention of fire in the biblical account of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, there is a suggestion of fire in the background of the \"Crucifixion\". Titian often incorporated fire into his pictures, even where historical records suggest the presence of fire is unwarranted. There is—for instance... |
Could a planet in a star cluster have a multi-phasic orbit? | Theoretically while it would be possible for a three star system to be stable, an iteration of something like that happening once would likely either cause the system to devolve, eject the planet, or send it into a star. Those interactions are pretty difficult to model but seeing the three star interactions themselves is pretty cool. _URL_0_ | [
"In non circumbinary planets, if a planet's distance to its primary exceeds about one fifth of the closest approach of the other star, orbital stability is not guaranteed. Whether planets might form in binaries at all had long been unclear, given that gravitational forces might interfere with planet formation. Theo... |
why are there so many michellin-star restaurants in japan compared to other countries? | A lot has to do with the craft that to Japanese restaurants put into their craft, sometimes spending decades perfecting a single dish/preparation. Watch the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi to get a feel for the extreme level of care they put into selecting ingredients, the care with with they work with them, etc. | [
"In 2010 Michelin guides ranked Japan as the country with the most starred restaurants. This sparked questioning over whether these high ratings were merited for Japanese restaurants, or whether the Michelin guide was too generous in giving out stars to gain an acceptance with Japanese customers and to enable the p... |
Hey guys, I'm back again with more questions about the Church, regarding their fall from power and how Henry VIII impacted the church. | Nominally, all the power was transferred to Henry VIII during the transformation, and essentially merged to separate hierarchies into one, at least at the top. Prior to the Reformation, there were sociopolitical and religious power structures, with some overlap between them. At the top of the sociopolitical structure was the monarch, and beside him was the highest religious authority in the land (Archbishop, Cardinal, or Pope). The Reformation essentially intertwined the uppermost power structures. I say nominally largely because a lot of the reforms of the Reformation did not truly play out until Edward IV. Most of the popular unrest seemed to have died out under Elizabeth, who offered somewhat of a reconciliation that appealed to all except the hard-line Catholics, and which led to unrest among the Puritans. The Protestant Church under Henry VIII retained, for the most part, many of the Catholic dogmas and practices.
The reason for Henry VIII's campaign stemmed from the Church's unwillingness to grand Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon. While there was not widespread discontent against the Church, as one might expect from such a wide-scale reform, Henry exploited whatever grievance there were against the Church as leverage in granting divorce. Some notable discontent issued from excess fines and taxation, pluralism and absenteeism, shortage of clergymen, localized monopolies over land, and so on. I'm a little fuzzy on the actual details, and I look forward to anyone providing clarification on the matter, particularly on your last question. My understanding is that the Reformation required new allegiances, obviously, but many of the English parishes retained their religious leaders. The biggest noticeable change, it seems, was the increased emphasis on Scripture as opposed to the devotional images and superstitious/magical practices of the Catholic church.
In understanding the on-the-ground nature of the Reformation, or parish life before and after, I highly recommend Eamon Duffy's *Voices of Morebath*. While it's confined to a single parish in Devon, it provides valuable insight into community activities and economics prior to the Reformation, and resistance to it at its onset, through accounts by its parishioner, Sir Christopher Trychay. However, there are some things to keep in mind when evaluating the work: it implicitly extrapolates, suggesting that the events in Morebath were common; it's a revisionist argument that says the Reformation was not desired by most, but doesn't explain why resistance was so passive; and Duffy sort of adopts a nostalgic tone, and seems to idealize pre-Reformation parish life, largely because of his own sympathies. | [
"King Henry decided to remove the Church of England from the authority of Rome. In 1534, the Act of Supremacy recognized Henry as \"the only Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England\". Between 1535 and 1540, under Thomas Cromwell, the policy known as the Dissolution of the Monasteries was put into effect. The... |
What was the motivation behind Soldiers of Slavic Countries fighting for the Axis in WW2? Countries like Estonia, Czechoslovakia and The Ukraine. | Your initial premise is mistaken on one example: Estonians are not Slavic but Uralic/Finnic. | [
"After the victory of the Czechoslovak troops at the Battle of Sokolovo, this was the second time that a foreign force trained by the Soviet Union participated in the Soviet-German front. In comparison, the circumstance of the Polish force was quite different from their Czechoslovak comrades. In mid-1941, the Sovie... |
how did aig, an insurance company, go bankrupt when the housing bubble burst? | Technically it wasn't mortgage insurance (those companies failed too, but AIG wasn't in that business).
Several decades ago some mathematicians figured out something important: that if you take a bunch of very risky things whose risks aren't aligned the risk of loss declines. That's the basic insight of modern finance. But it's crucial to remember that it only works when the risks aren't all depending on the same event.
The housing bubble was inflated because everyone in finance believed that mortgages in different parts of the country were different enough that a group of risky mortgages were still different enough to keep that lower risk. These mortgages were packaged together into what were basically drone banks, that made it easy to finance lots of them.
AIG effectively took the role of the FDIC for all those drone mortgage banks. It guaranteed that it would bear the losses beyond a certain point, believing that there was no way for a nationwide large decline in home prices.
It was hard for the company to see how wrong they were in advance, because no one would trust a company without a pristine credit rating, and they were one of the only companies in the world left with such a credit rating (so there was no competition). Which meant they were providing that guarantee for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of virtual banks, who nearly all failed at the same time because they were actually all depending easy lending pushing home prices further and further up.
The bankruptcy was caused by enormous demands for collateral, as home prices declined nationally and most of the drone banks began to fail, far beyond what AIG could actually meet.
The bailouts were made to their clients. | [
"Many businesses found that their insurers withdrew trade credit insurance during the late-2000s financial crisis, foreseeing large losses if they continued to underwrite sales to failing businesses. This led to accusations that the insurers were deepening and prolonging the recession, as businesses could not affor... |
What kinds of changes did European navies face in the early modern period? | Perhaps this [post](_URL_0_) helps a bit, until one of our boat experts chimes in ;-).
To more directly answer your question, naval warfare developed quite a bit, in different parts of Europe, so I give a few illustrations here.
**Spain in the Mediterranean**
Spain's naval prowess evolved in nature over a rather long period in the development of naval power, and the development of the states that could afford to be a strong naval power.
Spain rose in strength (or more precisely the union of Castile & Leon, and Aragon, and Navarra) under Isabella and Ferdinand, at a time when Castile was the dominant power. In this period, Castile's major trading partners were the Nederlanders and the Italians. The discovery of the Americas and division of the world between Spain and Portugal meant that Spain had a new focus on the Atlantic, administered under the Council of Castile.
Following the reconquesta, expansion into North Africa also made sense due to growing need to import food items into Iberia, as Castile was increasingly focused on sheep-herding at the cost of agriculture. Under Charles V we saw a partnership with Genoa's galley navy in the region, where Genoa provided much of the naval assets and Spain provided the infantry to fight on the galleys and maintain garrisons (presidio) in the ports and towns they control.
In this period, the east coast (Mediterranean) of Spain, namely lands under Aragon, were in either upheaval or economic distress. So Spain's partnership with Genoa increased along with its strategic interest in the Mediterranean.
As Ottoman power in the Mediterranean grew, so did conflict with Spain and her allies. As we know, this culminated in the great Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where Spain's Philip II funded a large navy with Genoa, Venice, Papal State as partners. That victory was due to strong galley fleet that could maneuver under manpower even in the absence of favorable wind, carrying a large number of soldiers on board. The prevailing tactic was to fire once at close range as the galleys came close, then grapple, then send fearsome Spanish soldiers for boarding action. In fact, this is exactly the instruction given to Spanish soldiers. Those who had assisted with manning the guns were told to move to the upper deck after firing. The guns themselves are on older 2-wheel carriages, so reloading them was arduous if not outright impossible during combat.
The Battle of Lepanto itself was won through maneuvering and boarding action. The Ottoman flagship of Uluç Ali, the Sultana, was boarded by more than 3 Spanish galleys. Seven Ottoman galleys came from behind the Sultana and their soldiers came on board the Sultana to fight the Spanish. The Spanish commander de Bazan's own galley joined the melée along with a squadron of Spanish ships, turning the Sultana to a battlefield into which soldiers from both sides poured in to fight. In the end, Uluç Ali was killed and his head was displayed from a pike, crushing Ottoman morale.
**English gunnery**
As war with England loomed, you have keep in mind several factors:
* Henry VIII Tudor was allied with Charles V of Spain, and his first wife was Catherine of Aragon, sister of Charles V. Henry had wanted to marry his first daughter Mary to Charles V, although Charles married a Portuguese bride with larger dowry. Instead, Mary was married to Philip II of Spain. This was part of Charles V's grand strategy of a northern orbit: Spain - England - Low Countries.
* The period of Mary's rule of England saw Spanish naval knowledge being absorbed by English shipbuilders. Mary ordered the building of *race-built galleons* following Spanish design but with emphasis on gunnery. This includes more guns and better reloading mechanisms, in particular re-design of the gun carriages to use 4 wheels. So basically while the vessels were designed in Spanish style, the armament was done in English style.
* Elizabeth, as we know now, was a Protestant and eventually led England away from Spain's orbit to become an outright adversary. She ordered further ships built following the design done in the era of Mary. These are the ships that led the battle against the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Speaking of which, the Spanish came into that battle first of all wanting to avoid confrontation with the English fleet. Their objective was to escort a large flotilla of transport vessels to the Low Countries where they could take the Army of Flanders across the strait to England, to conquer England. And this they nearly succeeded in doing, except for weather, English gunnery, and English persistence.
The two navies had very different goals. The Spanish would have much preferred to avoid the English navy. But they had to stay together as a fleet to protect the slow and vulnerable transports. If they had to fight, they preferred to fight on the decks, not from a distance. The English wanted to stop the invasion. They didn't want to fight a boarding action, they preferred ranged gunnery action.
The Mediterranean had taught the Spanish how to fight as a navy, culminating in their victory in Lepanto. But that style of fighting failed in the battle against England due to asymmetric objectives, advances in gunnery, differences between Mediterranean and Channel conditions, poor high-level strategy (most agree that the Spanish will likely have done better if they had either invaded England or Ireland straight from Spain itself, or have the Army of Flanders do their own crossing, rather than have to escort transporters literally around England first), weather, tactics, etc.
**Other theaters of operation**
I skipped over the Baltics, and various French attempts at building a navy, and of course the skirmishes between the *Watergeuzens* and the *Dunkirkers*. For those, I highly recommend perusing through the references below.
**References**
* Angus Konstam, "Sovereigns of the Sea," ISBN 978-0-470-11667-8, 2007.
* Geoffrey Parker, "The Grand Strategy of Philip II," ISBN 978-0300082739, 2000.
* Roger Crowley, "Empires of the Sea," ISBN 978-1-58836-733-4, 2008. | [
"The Royal Navy had evolved with Britain's development by the middle of the eighteenth century into what has been described as the greatest industrial power in the western world. The Admiralty and Navy Board began a programme of modernisation of dockyards at Portsmouth and Plymouth such that by the start of the war... |
. why has secret service become so controversial when it was held in such high esteem in the past? | There have been a number of scandals recently that have plagued the Secret Service. They used to be thought of as consummate law enforcement professionals and instead have shown shocking lapses in judgement.
- [Lawmakers investigating allegations that two senior Secret Service agents drove drunk through an active bomb threat investigation at the White House](_URL_1_)
- [Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Colombia who allegedly engaged in "sex parties" with prostitutes hired by local drug cartels also arranged for paid sex for at least two Secret Service agents traveling to the country to protect President Obama in 2012.](_URL_3_)
- [Secret Service Agents Booted From Obama’s Europe Trip After Drinking](_URL_0_)
- [Secret Service missed man with gun in elevator with Obama](_URL_2_)
| [
"In the 1990s, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan deplored the \"culture of secrecy\" made possible by the Espionage Act, noting the tendency of bureaucracies to enlarge their powers by increasing the scope of what is held \"secret\".\n",
"A partial reason of the secret societies' ability to engage and sustaining th... |
how can the dea schedule cbd as a schedule i drug? can they not be sued over this misrepresentation? there is science out there showing medical benefits. what's going on? | DEA has a conflict of interest. Marijuana is their bread and butter. It is the easiest drug to fight because everyone does it. If they admit that it is harmless, they are effectively admitting that most of what they do is a waste of time and money. This is why you can't leave it up to them. You are asking them to cut their own agency. | [
"While engaged in scheduling debates in the United States, the DEA also pushed for international scheduling. In 1985 the World Health Organization's Expert Committee on Drug Dependence recommended that MDMA be placed in Schedule I of the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances. The committee made ... |
what actually happens when a molecule activates a receptor vs when an inhibitor molecule just blocks it? | Think of the molecule as a key and the receptor as a lock. The "real" key will always be able to open the lock as intended. However, there are some keys that coincidentally have a similar shape to the "real" key, but not similar enough to open the lock. So when you try to open the lock with the similar key, instead of opening the lock, it gets jammed and it gets stuck. The lock is still locked while the key is stuck, which is a metaphor for how the inhibitor just gets stuck in the receptor without causing a biological effect. | [
"An inhibitor can reduce the effectiveness of a catalyst in a catalysed reaction (either a non-biological catalyst or an enzyme). E.g., if a compound is so similar to (one of) the reactants that it can bind to the active site of a catalyst but does not undergo a catalytic reaction then that catalyst molecule cannot... |
How did the internet spread globally, specifically with the role of the underwater cables? | There is a twenty year rule on this subreddit. The Intenet did not become widespread until around 1995, and high speed internet with fiber optics did not become widespread in the US until after 2005. The Tech world moves a lot faster than academic history does. A dial up modem might seem like ancient history to a computer geek, but twenty years ago, not to many people in the US were on the internet.
However, this question is intriguing. The May 15 2007 PBS Frontline episode "Spying on the homefront" shows the National Securiity Agency sifting through 250,000 messages per second that pour out of the Trans Pacific fibre optic cable. This fibre-optic cable was completed on August 2001 with the initial capacity of 640 gigabytes of data per second. During March 2008, the capacity has been increased to 1.28 terrabytes per second. | [
"Underwater cables, which cannot be kept under constant surveillance, have tempted intelligence-gathering organizations since the late 19th century. Frequently at the beginning of wars, nations have cut the cables of the other sides to redirect the information flow into cables that were being monitored. The most am... |
why do volume sliders in applications never seem to provide a linear increase or decrease in volume? | Human perception of volume changes is not linear, it's actually logrithmic. For example, the perceived change of about "twice as loud" is about 20 times higher than the original (it's around a change of 10 dB).
If you put a linear slider, meaning if you move it up and down it changes the volume linearly, it doesn't sound linear because we don't perceive it like that. You need a logarithmic slider to get a perceived linear change. Good developers use a logarithmic slider, bad ones don't. | [
"This was necessary due to the limitations of dynamic range on optical motion picture film of the period, however the volume compression and expansion were not fully automatic, but were designed to allow manual studio \"enhancement\"; i.e., the artistic adjustment of overall volume and the relative volume of each t... |
what is keeping the billions in bad student loan debt from crashing the market like the bad housing debt did? | Nothing. IMO it's coming. And soon.
It's already being blamed for the slow recovery from the recession and I just heard on the radio that housing markets are still slumping because first time homebuyers aren't lining up because of student loan debt... So it's already negatively affecting other sectors.
| [
"In April 2012, student loan debt reached US$1 trillion. Severity of the student debt burden represents such a threat to the middle class that some have demanded a general bailout. Anthropologist David Graeber, author of \",\" argues that student debt is \"destroying the imagination of youth\":\n",
"Some believe ... |
why do some guns have magazines with 2 bullets side by side? | It’s called double stacked. Is so you can fit more rounds without having a mag that is a foot long. A 12 in mag would be a tactical nightmare always getting caught on things. | [
"There are two general types of pistol magazines: single stack and double stack magazines. Single stack magazines hold anything from 7 to upwards of 20 rounds depending on the weapon type. The BBs are stacked directly on top of each other, hence the term \"single stack\".\n",
"Unlike the single stack magazines, \... |
how come some headphones sound better when slightly pulled out? | Audiophiles have a term for this: insertion depth. Some headphones, like you've noticed, are very sensitive to insertion depth. The amount of air in between the speaker and your eardrum, combined with the shape of the space formed, will alter the tone.
An exaggerated form of the same effect is the trombone, whereby changing the shape, length, and volume of the air cavity can actually change the note of the trombone entirely. | [
"Open-back headphones have the back of the earcups open. This leaks more sound out of the headphone and also lets more ambient sounds into the headphone, but gives a more natural or speaker-like sound, due to including sounds from the environment.\n",
"Supra-aural headphones or on-ear headphones have pads that pr... |
Do black holes continue to grow and expand as they absorb more matter? What determines the size of a black hole? | Yes, if black holes accrete more matter, they gain in mass and thus they increase in size. For the most simple case of a non-rotating black hole, the radius is the so called Schwarzschild radius, which is about 3km per solar mass (so a Black Hole with 2 solar masses would have a radius of 6km). | [
"There are three reasons the black holes in the ELIRGs could be massive. First, the embryonic black holes might be bigger than thought possible. Second, the Eddington limit was exceeded. When a black hole feeds, gas falls in and heats, emitting light. The pressure of the emitted light forces the gas outward, creati... |
the significance of sea levels rising a few feet | That's 7 feet straight up. Go to the beach. It's pretty close to flat. If that was 7 feet higher, it would engulf the whole beach and like 8 blocks of downtown depending on where you are. | [
"Sea levels can be affected by many factors and are known to have varied greatly over geological time scales. However 20th century and current millennium sea level rise is caused by global warming, and careful measurement of variations in MSL can offer insights into ongoing climate change.\n",
"Superimposed on th... |
what's the difference between intolerant and allergy. why can't it be peanut intolerant or lactose allergy? | Allergy is when your immune system is the issue, intolerance is when it's some other body issue like incorrect digestion or wrong chemical pathway. A milk allergy (which is rare) would be your immune system attacking milk like it was an intruder. lactose intolerance is your body being unable to digest milk sugar well and the issues of having a bunch of indigestible sugars hanging out in your guts. | [
"Peanut allergy is a type of food allergy to peanuts. It is different from tree nut allergies. Physical symptoms of allergic reaction can include itchiness, hives, swelling, eczema, sneezing, asthma, abdominal pain, drop in blood pressure, diarrhea, and cardiac arrest. Anaphylaxis may occur.\n",
"In the United St... |
If you place 2 glasses of water, one 50 degrees Fahrenheit and the other 90, in a room that is 70 degrees, which will reach room temperature first and why? | Heat transfer is proportional to:
1. Temperature gradient.
2. Thermal conductivity.
3. Area of contact.
Let's assume the area of the water surface in each glass is the same. Since the temperature gradients are the same initially, it comes down to the question of whether the thermal conductivity is the same for 50 degree water and 90 degree water.
Turns out it isn't. This is a value that is temperature dependent for water. [This pdf](_URL_0_) gives standard values on page 4.
At 90 F (305K), the thermal conductivity is higher than at 50 F (283 K), so the rate at which the 90 degree water will cool will be faster than the temperature that the 50 degree water will rise. | [
"BULLET::::- 1742 – Anders Celsius proposed a scale with zero at the boiling point and 100 degrees at the freezing point of water. It was later changed to be the other way around, on the input from Swedish academy of science.\n",
"BULLET::::- Immersion of the watch in 30 cm of water at the following temperatures ... |
How common was illegitimate birth in medieval Western Europe? Was "bastardry" a significant social inhibitor across all levels of society? | It was quite common among the elite social classes. William the Conqueror was known in Normandy as William the Bastard because his mother was the daughter of a tanner and his father was the Duke of Normandy. His status as a bastard did not inhibit him from becoming his fathers heir to the duchy of Normandy and eventually the King of England. However, after his ascension to the throne laws were passed to inhibit a bastard from becoming King. Royal bastards could receive royal favors and titles. Henry VIII bastard son, Henry FitzRoy, became the Duke of Richmond and Somerset and the Earl of Nottingham. Side not the name FitzRoy means "son of the king" and was a common surname given to royal bastards. There are cases where the bastard line became legitimate after the mother and father officially married. Some examples are the Beaufort and Tudor lines that were legitimized upon royal approval and the marriage of the mother and father. I'm sorry I can only speak on royal English illegitimate lines. I believe France had even looser rules and practices concerning royal bastards. The French did have the title of maitresse-en-titre, an official title held by the mistress of the French King. | [
"By the mid 1070s ecclesiastical courts heard cases that involved bastardy. Bastard children, according to English common law, were \"filius nullius\", which meant that they were no one’s child. They could not make any claim on their parents for support nor was anyone indebted by law to take care of them. In public... |
Were neanderthals really stronger than humans? | My apologies if I'm wrong, but isn't this beyond the scope of this sub? | [
"Compared to modern humans, Neanderthals were stockier, with shorter legs and bigger bodies. In conformance with Bergmann's rule, as well as Allen's rule, this was likely an adaptation to preserve heat in cold climates. Male and female Neanderthals had cranial capacities averaging and , respectively,\n",
"The Nea... |
why can’t we eat some food raw, instead we cook/boil/steam it until we can eat it in that form? | Pretty sure you can eat agonist anything raw if you're savage enough, it's just not recommended due to bacteria etc...also most things taste better cooked...IMO | [
"Cooking can prevent many foodborne illnesses that would otherwise occur if the food is eaten raw. When heat is used in the preparation of food, it can kill or inactivate harmful organisms, such as bacteria and viruses, as well as various parasites such as tapeworms and \"Toxoplasma gondii\". Food poisoning and oth... |
Is there any science behind colorblind people having better low-light vision than people with normal vision? | I'm not aware of any studies that show that people with colorblindess have better low-light vision through physiological mechanisms. With that said, one of the interesting things about those with achromatropsia is because of their inability to detect some or all colors (partial or complete achromatropsia) due to lack or improper functioning of cone cells, is their ability to seemingly better utilize their rod (peripheral/night) vision. This can often give the appearance of better night vision. The reason for this stems from the natural tendency for those with normal color vision to focus on objects using their cone heavy foveas, which perform poorly in low-light.
In fact, achromatropes tend to have poorer visual acuity, and more difficutly in seeing in normal light conditions (as rods are burned out).
Finally, I should mention that there is a form a colorblindness that can result from a neurological insult, but I feel it's not as applicable here.
As an aside, there is a great book by Oliver Sacks called "Island of the Colorblind", in which he details his trip to some pacific islands/atolls to study a high incidence of colorblindess. You might find this interesting. | [
"Some tentative evidence finds that color blind people are better at penetrating certain color camouflages. Such findings may give an evolutionary reason for the high rate of red–green color blindness. There is also a study suggesting that people with some types of color blindness can distinguish colors that people... |
On a Cellular level, how does oxygenated blood reach each individual cell in the body for cellular respiration to occur? | Capillaries take [red bloods cells near to a cell](_URL_1_).
Oxygen [is released from hemoglobin](_URL_3_) depending on the concentrations of certain molecules in the the vicinity. This is mediated [mainly by pH and CO2](_URL_0_), but also 2,3-BPG plays an important role.
Oxygen in the blood serum [diffuses into the interstitial fluid](_URL_2_), and from there into the cell. | [
"In vertebrates, oxygen is taken into the body by the tissues of the lungs, and passed to the red blood cells in the bloodstream. Oxygen is then distributed to all of the tissues in the body and offloaded from the red blood cells to respiring cells. Hemoglobin then picks up carbon dioxide to be returned to the lung... |
Is Morgellons disease completely fake? | [Here](_URL_0_) is a good analysis. | [
"The first article to propose Morgellons as a new disease in a scientific journal was a review article co-authored by members of the MRF and published in 2006 by the \"American Journal of Clinical Dermatology\". A 2006 article in the \"San Francisco Chronicle\" reported, \"There have been no clinical studies\" of M... |
what is stem and why are so many jobs requiring it? | STEM means Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. So jobs like programming, engineering, medicine, etc. which are important for bettering human kind and provide well paying careers are all dependent on STEM skills. | [
"The concept of a pre-STEM program is being developed to address America's need for more college-trained professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). It is an innovation meant to fill a gap at community colleges that do not have 'major' degree paths that students identify with on their... |
if you body paralyzes you while you sleep, how come some people roll over or randomly swing their leg out without control? | I think you are just misunderstanding what happens when you go to sleep. Your body does not "paralyze" you. Your brain is just not sending as many signals to your arms and legs to move but sometimes unconsciously those signals are sent to put you in a more comfortable position. Your brain is still sending and receiving signals all the time, just not nearly as much when you are asleep. | [
"BULLET::::- Periodic limb movement disorder (PLMD), sudden involuntary movement of arms and/or legs during sleep, for example kicking the legs. Also known as nocturnal myoclonus. See also Hypnic jerk, which is not a disorder.\n",
"Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is generally a long term disorder that causes a stron... |
What would happen if a nuclear fireball extended past the atmosphere? | An explosion-driven fireball that you see is largely a pressure wave. The fire you see is atmospheric molecules combusting. It's inherently different from, for instance, a volcanic eruption, where lots of 'new' material is being shot upward.
That being said, the atmosphere would define a boundary for the pressure wave. And if there were lots of material being driven upward, that material could expand the height of the atmosphere for a short time, but the low pressure would equalize the atmosphere back to typical heights.
It's also difficult to talk about atmosphere in this way, because there are layers with varying temperature/pressure responses (among other physical properties). The earth's atmosphere just slowly dissipates at higher altitudes.
Now, generally speaking, the higher material goes in the atmosphere, the farther it can be spread across the face of the earth. Is that more of what you're asking? | [
"For an explosion in the atmosphere, the fireball quickly expands to maximum size, and then begins to cool as it rises like a balloon through buoyancy in the surrounding air. As it does so it takes on the flow pattern of a vortex ring with incandescent material in the vortex core as seen in certain photographs. Thi... |
do your eyes turn off when you sleep or are you still able to see? | My understanding of current research is that vision still gets processed at a basic level, but it doesn't register in your consciousness unless it's very important (like life-threatening). You could say your entire vision is subliminal when you're asleep. | [
"Another study has indicated that sleeping with the light on may protect the eyes of diabetics from retinopathy, a condition that can lead to blindness. However, the initial study is still inconclusive.\n",
"Nocturnal Lagophthalmos (where one’s eyelids don’t close enough to cover the eye completely during sleep) ... |
why do my headphones buzz when i have an electric blanket turned on top of me? | When an electric current runs through a wire, it produces a magnetic field. In turn, magnetic fields can induce current in nearby wires. If your headphone wire is near the blanket, the blanket could actually be inducing a current in that wire. That would cause a buzzing sound. | [
"There is a known problem for this particular unit. Several laptops have their wireless antenna placed along the top of the laptop display. Clipping the microphone to a laptop display like this may cause interference with the microphone, resulting in a great deal of static.\n",
"This model also suffers from a whi... |
why are people so angry about wwe right now and why is #cancelwwenetwork trending worldwide on twitter? | SPOILERS FOR THE ROYAL RUMBLE WARNING.
Okay, this won't be short though because it's not really that simple unless you say "an inexperienced wrestler being pushed by the management won instead of several better suited and highly loved fan favourites."
The WWE puts a lot of stock in having a central figure they consider "the face of the company." In the past it's included household names like Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, The Rock, and for the past decade has been a guy called John Cena.
Cena's getting on a bit now and it's expected they'll have him pass the torch to a new "face of the company" in the next couple of years.
For a couple of years now, the guy they've been grooming is a man called Roman Reigns. He's a big guy, very good looking, great physique, he's visually perfect for what they want and has lived a clean lifestyle etc.
The problem is, he's not that good. He puts on basically fine performances in the ring, but nothing special and certainly not main event quality. He's also lacking charisma and has frequently botched his lines during promos over the past few months.
Meanwhile, there are guys who are seriously talented who are much beloved by the crowd, but these guys (if you want names look up Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler and Bray Wyatt) just don't have "the look" that management wants.
Last year, Daniel Bryan was the hottest thing in the company by a mile, yet a "surprise return" by Dave Bautista saw him win the Rumble. Fans went apeshit, knowing that Bautista wouldn't stay around long; he had filmed Guardians of the Galaxy and would inevitably take time off during summer to go promote it, he just came back to the company from a year off and instantly gets handed the top spot in the business (the winner of the Rumble gets a guaranteed title shot at Wrestlemania in the main event).
Luckily, in that instance management listened to the outcry from fans saying "how dare you just hand the belt over to this part-timer instead of the man we've cheered for and supported for years." They changed the main event to have a three-way match which Daniel Bryan won, and fans were happy.
This year, they've had Roman Reigns win the rumble, making it two years in a row they've ignored what the fans wanted to push their own agenda. The way it ended was a slap in the face too, having all the fan favourites dumped out in embarassing ways that made them never look like serious contenders.
So now the main event at Wrestlemania is now going to be a guy who's about to leave the business and return to UFC (Brock Lesnar) vs a rookie without the talent or experience to be the champion (who will obviously win the belt, because the other guy's leaving). A lot of people feel it'll be a boring shit sandwich of a match instead of a classic of in-ring athleticism, and resent the WWE saying "we don't care, this guy's going to be the champion for years to come and we're going to pretend you love it anyway and that he's a huge fan favourite" leading to this social media rumble to the contrary and a movement to hit them financially.
Edit: I should mention Daniel Bryan also never lost the belt. A month after winning Wrestlemania last year, he had to take time off for surgery and relinquished the belt. He returned a couple of weeks ago, so it seemed absolutely natural he'd win again and get a shot to get the belt back. | [
"In April 2017, WWE became embroiled in a scandal concerning the company allowing certain employees to harass others, most notably John Bradshaw Layfield. According to multiple sources including Dave Meltzer's \"Wrestling Observer\", hazing is something which is encouraged by the higher ups in the company and has b... |
Before WW2, Singapore was considered a nearly unconquerable fortress, a "Gibraltar of the East". How then were the Japanese able to conquer it and the Malay peninsula so quickly and easily? | Singapore was the linchpin for British control in the Far East. As you have noted, it was referred to as the "Gibraltar of the East" because of how heavily fortified it was. Yet, it was overconfidence in the defences of Singapore that were to be one of the reasons for Japan's swift victory. Also, the British paid very little attention to the defence of the Far East, seeing it as less important compared to the war in Europe and Africa. The British command in the Far East had not received any where near enough aircraft and the aircraft they did receive were outdated. The famous "guns of Singapore", contrary to popular belief, they were able to turn inland, but they lacked the ammo necessary to fire on Infantry, the only ammo they had was armour piercing shells meant for sinking ships. In 1940 the Japanese had sent military officers into Singapore to observe the defences , and they correctly noted that Singapore could only be attacked from the North, from across the strait of Johore. The British command was also filled with indecisiveness, do they defend only Singapore, or do they defend the whole Malayan peninsula? Several officers had noted that Singapore wasn't the "fortress" that it was made out to be, and that Britain's survival would depend on defending the whole island, but despite a lot of talk, very little change in the defensive plans actually happened.
On December 4th, the Japanese invasion force embarked and headed towards Malaya, they were commanded by Yamashita Tomoyuki; a rising star in the Imperial Japanese Army. He was confident, even taking time to write poetry like this:
> On the day the sun shines with the moon
The arrow leaves the bow
It carries my spirit towards the enemy
With me are a hundred million souls
My people of the East
On this day when the moon shines
And the sun both shine
He had every right to be confident, the Japanese would have complete aerial dominance. The Japanese had stationed 600 quality aircraft in Indochina, and these aircraft outclassed and outnumbered anything the British could them. The Japanese also had detailed knowledge of the British defensive situation and there British defensive plans. This was thanks to the "Automeden" incident. The Automeden was a British ship that got attacked by a German surface raider. The ship was carrying secret documents that gave details on the British defences in the Far East, and these were promptly handed over to the Japanese. This incident actually played a vital role in convincing the Japanese to go to war, as it showed how weak the Allied defences in Asia were.
At 1:30 AM on December 8th, the Japanese landed at a place called Kota Bahru. The Japanese quickly overran the defences and destoryed around 60 British planes in doing so. The British to make a quick retreat inland. As the British retreated they left behind motor vehicles and airfields, all of which the Japanese happily put to use. Around this time "Force Z", the British naval task force sent to help Singapore, left its temporary base in the Philippines and sailed towards Singapore. The admiral of the force refused air cover, and he payed for it as Japanese aircraft sunk destroyed his force, sinking one of the Royal Navy's most modern battleships, "The Prince of Wales".
The British soldiers were generally inexperienced and made a number of false assumptions. Firstly they underestimated the Japanese fighting ability, they assumed that Japanese soldiers could not tolerate the jungle conditions of Malaya, and finally they assumed that Japanese soldiers would be hampered by lack of infrastructure. The Japanese proved all these assumptions wrong. The Japanese troops in Malay were battle hardened and many of them had fought in China. The Japanese were adept at jungle warfare, they wore light clothing that made navigating through the jungle heat easy. This came back to bite the British, who's soldiers were not experienced in jungle warfare, many times the Japanese would simply go through the jungle and appear behind the British lines. And finally the Japanese used bicycles to great effect; this "bicycle blitzkrieg" was extremely effective as large amounts of Japanese soldiers were able to outpace the British and overrun the British defensive positions almost as soon as they were established.
After their initial landing the main Japanese advance turned to the West coast of Malaya. The British retreated back to a defensive line that, according to its commander, should have held out for three months. But the Japanese used their small number of tanks to crash through the line in fifteen hours. The Japanese were able to supply many of their needs using captured British supplies, which speaks to the speed of the British collapse. Next, the Japanese took out the fortress of Penang, which was one of the oldest British possessions on the peninsula. The Japanese taunted the British with radio broadcasts as the Japanese began to bomb Singapore:
> you English gentlemen: “How do you
like our bombing? Isn't it a better tonic than your whisky soda?”’
As the Japanese bombing campaign continued, the British administration began to fall apart. Desertions from local units became common, and morale plummeted. Despite "fortress Singapore" still standing, most people knew that the British couldn't hold out for much longer. The last obstacle for the Japanese on the road to Kuala Lumpur, was a rocky bastion near the town of Kampar. The 11th Indian division made a stand here, but was quickly pushed back by the Imperial Guards division of the Japanese Army, they fell back to the Slim River where the division was destroyed by the Japanese tanks. Despite all these setbacks, the arrival of British reinforcements from the Middle East meant that the British still outnumbered the Japanese.
The end came for Singapore on February 15th, when the reservoirs that supplied water to Singapore fell into Japanese hands. The Japanese had gotten across the strait of Johore and onto Singapore island on February 7th. They had beaten back the Australian 22nd and 27th brigades which had been given the task of keeping the Japanese off the island. Arthur Percival the commander of the British land forces in Malaya was told to hold Singapore until the last man, but he had a crisis on his hands. The population of Singapore had swollen to well over a million due to massive amounts of refugees, and he didn't have the supplies to keep them and his troops alive. Percival surrender to the Japanese along with over 100,000 Commonwealth soldiers. For his part Percival would hold some minor offices later in life, but the fall of Singapore would always be a stain on his record. The Japanese commander, Tomoyuki Yamashita, would later be put into a militarily insignificant post in Manchuria, he would later be called out of this exile to participate in the defence of the Philippines. He would be executed by the Americans at the end of the war for war crimes.
Ultimately the British defeat is a classic case of a smaller, well prepared force, defeating a larger, unprepared force. The British may have been able to put up a reasonable defence, but with their attention focused on Africa and Europe, the Far Eastern theatre kinda got lost in all the commotion, and the people of Malaya and Singapore suffered for it.
Books I would recommend for this topic are "Forgotten Armies" by Tim Harper, which is one of the best books about the British campaign in the Far East. Also, for an overview of the Japanese Army, look for "Japan's Imperial Army: Its rise and fall" by Edward Drea. For a political look at effects of the British surrender at Singapore, I would recommend the book "The Rise and Fall of the British Empire" by Lawrence James. | [
"In 1942, during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, the Japanese Imperial Army led by General Yamashita Tomoyuki stationed themselves at the building and Istana Bukit Serene to plan for the invasion of Singapore. The Japanese used the building as a fortress and a command centre to spy on the British activities in S... |
Do we know if the Mexica knew of the existence to the, relatively large, Incan Empire to their south? If there was any foreign relations between the Aztecs/Incans? | There's always room for discussion, but perhaps the question [Was there communication between Andean civilizations and Mesoamerican ones?](_URL_1_) answered by /u/400-rabbits from the [Pre-Columbian Trade and Contact](_URL_0_) section of our FAQ will answer your inquiry. | [
"A relatively common misconception is that a small number of \"conquistadores\" conquered vast territories, aided only by disease epidemics and their powerful caballeros. In fact, recent archaeological excavations have suggested a vast Spanish-Indian alliance numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Hernán Cortés ev... |
if a person who is the age of consent has sex with someone one year under the age of consent, does it count as statutory rape? | Depends on the specific laws.
Some places have laws that treat it as a hard limit. If the age of consent is say 18, that means anyone having sex with an under 18 year old is breaking the law. Even if that person is only 19.
Some other places treat it more as a gradated thing. There is generally a lower age limit under which all manners of sex are illegal (say 14), then a period where it is legal to have sex with someone else who is within a few years of your own age (say, between the ages of 14 - 17, you are fine having sex with people that are no more than 4 years older than you) and then there is an upper limit above which you are free to bone anyone above that (in this example 17+). So that would mean in this fictional example that a 13 year old could never have sex legally. A 16 year old could have sex with a 19 year old but not a 63 year old. And a 18 year old can screw a 109 year old man for all the law cares.
You'd have to check the laws in your particular area to know for certain. | [
"Article 155 states that sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 16 committed by a person over the age of 18 shall be punishable. Additionally, according to Article 152 (since January 2019) sexual intercouse with a person under the age of 14 (regardless of his/her voluntary consent) is a rape. The law no ... |
Is there such thing as an allergic reaction to alcohol? Are some people's immune systems incapable of managing the stress that alcohol consumption puts on them? | I've never heard of an allergy to ethanol. Some people are alcohol intolerant, which means they have a genetic deficiency of an enzyme known as alcohol dehydrogenase. If someone does have a real allergic reaction while drinking alcohol, it is probably a reaction to something else in the drink that was added for flavor, and not the EtOH.
The idea of an alcohol "allergy" probably comes from observing the symptoms of alcohol intolerance, which include skin turning red and a runny nose. These are symptoms that are generally associated with real allergies, so that's probably where the mix up originated.
| [
"Diagnosis of alcohol sensitivity due to allergic reactivity to the allergens in alcoholic beverages can be confirmed by standard skin prick tests, skin patch tests, blood tests, challenge tests, and challenge/elimination tests as conducted for determining the allergen causing other classical allergic reactions (se... |
Woken up so suddenly that your body "wakes up", but you yourself don't? What is this phenomenon? | If this is true, it sounds like an extended state of sleep walking. Sleep walking occurs when the brain is in a disassociated state shifting to/from waking/sleeping. Basically, the whole brain does not wake up--part of it can remain in sleep signal patterns.
Severity and symptoms of sleep walking differ between person to person. Some people may just move from the bed to a couch. Some sleep eat. Some sleep talk excessively.
Probably, because of the violent nature by which he was yanked awake, only part of his brain successfully made that jump. It's not very common, and usually is a rarity for even casual sleep walkers, but I've seen much stranger things in sleep walking studies. | [
"When awake, our brainwaves are faster during the first half of the cycle, when we feel alert and focused, and then our brainwaves slow; in the last 20 minutes when we feel dreamy and perhaps a little tired, while our body is being readied for the alert part of the following cycle. \n",
"Awakening can mean the en... |
why do people in extremely poor countries have children that they will not be able to feed or adequately look after? | There's a number of reasons.
One of the biggest is simply access to birth control. We take it for granted. They either can't afford it, or it's not available in their area. So they have a lot more babies when they follow the basic instinct and drive to have sex.
A lot of those nations don't have the same level of gender equality that we do. The women have to do what the guys want them to do, sad as it sounds. So at worst there's a lot more rape, leading to more babies. And at best a woman wants to hook up quickly with a stable guy that will help her be safe... and sex which leads to babies is one means of doing that.
And of course there's just plain standard of living coupled with educational levels. When all of your friends have babies and you don't understand what it truly means, as a young female you're going to be more open to it.
In a number of those third-world societies you don't save for retirement. Your kids are what looks after you when you retire. So you have lots of kids.
Finally, nobody EXPECTS their kids to die of starvation or famine. Those things are more common in some areas, but they're not absolutely guaranteed every year, and they move around some. What might be a great crop year when you are looking to a rosy future filled with all sorts of babies, could be a dry dusty bust the following one, and suddenly you have mouths to feed. | [
"The counter-argument is that in many poor countries people get far more children than they can reasonably feed, support and provide with a decent life under the circumstances. If people had fewer children with the aid of contraception, then it would put much less pressure on already scarce resources and enable a b... |
how does a human sperm cell carry as much genetic data as an egg 2000 times its size so much as to where the offspring looks and acts like the father more than the mother in some cases? | The actual genetic material is carried in a pretty small part of the cell called a nucleus. The majority of the egg cell’s mass is the cellular machinery required to start the replication and implantation once the egg is fertilized | [
"Sperm cells contribute approximately half of the nuclear genetic information to the diploid offspring (excluding, in most cases, mitochondrial DNA). In mammals, the sex of the offspring is determined by the sperm cell: a spermatozoon bearing a X chromosome will lead to a female (XX) offspring, while one bearing a ... |
why is biodiesel/biofuel considered "green"? | The carbon in a biofuel, say biodiesel, comes (mostly or entirely) from the "feedstock", the biological material the fuel was made from (almost always plants). This carbon, in turn, came from the atmosphere in recent history. Whenever the plant in question grew, usually in the last few years, that's when its carbon was "locked up". That carbon, in turn, is returned to the atmosphere when the fuel is burned. Conventional petrochemicals, on the other hand, burn and release carbon that was locked up a very, very long time ago, increasing our greenhouse gas levels. | [
"‘Sustainable’ and ‘green’ are for the most part used interchangeably however, there is a slight distinction between then. ‘Green’ design is centralized around specifically decreasing environmental impacts from human development whereas sustainability can be viewed for an environmental, economic or social lens. The... |
how does little caesars make money by selling pizzas for only $5? | Pizzas cost about 2 bucks to make... Add a buck for overhead and you have 40% margins. I'm sure a pizza guy will comment. I saw a similar tread a while back that I'm sourcing info from. | [
"Little Caesar Enterprises Inc. (doing business as Little Caesars) is the third-largest pizza chain in the United States, behind Pizza Hut and Domino's Pizza. It operates and franchises pizza restaurants in the United States and internationally in Asia, the Middle East, Australia, Canada, Latin America and the Cari... |
Dear Biologists of Reddit:Do our genes change gradually as we grow older? I know that genes change and get turned on/off as we grow older but do they change entirely in any way? | Yes and no. Your genes do not change, turning them off and on does not change the gene itself. However they can be mutated which does change them. Over your life time, approximately 30 mutations will take hold in you.
However remember these mutations usually have no effect due to 1. They only happen In a couple of cells out of trillions 2. Most of your DNA does nothing (at least not in the sense of making proteins, and functioning after development, especially in a differentiated cell). | [
"It has been shown that mutations in the gene are associated with increased lifespan. Defects of the gene slow down a variety of developmental and physiological processes, including the cell cycle, embryogenesis, post-embryonic growth, rhythmic behaviors and aging.\n",
"Some recent research has shown that the lev... |
Were Bin Laden & al-Qaeda terrorists when CIA supported them in the 80's? | > The CIA financed Bin Laden as he led al-Qaeda to fight back against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 80's.
If you have evidence that this is true that would be quite a shocking development, because there is currently no evidence whatsoever that the CIA financed, supported, trained, had contact with (etc.) Bin Laden in the 1980s.
The date of the foundation of al-Qaeda is disputed, but it was not until the early 1990s. | [
"A commonly expressed belief states that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had ties with Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda and its \"Afghan Arab\" fighters when it armed Mujahideen groups to fight the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War.\n",
"In December 1979, bin Laden joined Arab fighters against invading So... |
Do videos degrade on youtube over time? | > I mean, either it is stored in one place where it can slowly change bit by bit or it is copied over and over again where errors can be made while copying, no?
No. Files stored on a hard drive don't "slowly change bit by bit". They use robust error detection and correction algorithms. Not only can a random bit flip be detected, but there is extra data stored that allows the drive to know which bit was flipped, and to flip it back. Further, if one sector of the disc seems to constantly generate bad data, that entire sector is marked as bad, all the existing data is moved to another sector, and the disk will stop writing to the bad sector . . . all automatically.
It's quite possible for random errors to be introduced when copying digital files, but once again, methods are in place to detect and correct these errors.
Computer files aren't anything like old VHS tapes, which are analog data with no error correction. | [
"Successive generations of photocopies result in image distortion and degradation. It has been documented that successive repostings on Instagram results in noticeable changes. Likewise, repeated postings on YouTube degraded the work. Similar effects have been documented in copying of VHS tapes.\n",
"Outcries aro... |
What sphere of influence will the Voyager probe be in after it leaves the solar system? | Voyager I will orbit the galactic center after it's left the Oort cloud:
_URL_0_
It will probably never leave the Milky Way (unless some kind of natural gravity assist imparts addition velocity)
_URL_1_ | [
"Two other space probes made observations at the time of the impact: the \"Ulysses\" spacecraft, primarily designed for solar observations, was pointed towards Jupiter from its location away, and the distant \"Voyager 2\" probe, some from Jupiter and on its way out of the Solar System following its encounter with N... |
If energy can't be created or destroyed how much energy is there in the universe? | It is not actually necessarily true that energy can't be created or destroyed (which, in more formal language, is the statement "energy is conserved"). While we can often define something called the "total energy" for a system, in doing so we're making certain technical assumptions about it (specifically that there's a sense in which it's 'time-translation invariant'). When you try to apply those assumptions to the universe as a whole, you have to jump into the mathematics of the general theory of relativity and you discover that you have to be more precise about definitions. While I could go into more detail, it's been done elsewhere by people who had the leisure of taking the time to do it right. For two of my preferred examples, see
Sean Carroll's article titled [Energy is Not Conserved](_URL_1_) and
John Baez's more technical article on [energy conservation in general relativity](_URL_0_).
The short version of the answer to the question of whether energy is conserved in the general theory of relativity is given in the first line of the Baez article:
> In special cases, yes. In general — it depends on what you mean by "energy", and what you mean by "conserved".
Ultimately, I tend to side with Carroll in taking the position that
> When the space through which particles move is changing, the total energy of those particles is not conserved.
Since our universe is expanding, this statement implies (as the article title states) that energy is *not* conserved, in which case the "total energy" isn't constant.
That said, as alluded to in Carroll's article and worked out in some detail by Baez, there are other possible interpretations of the question and other possible answers. If you do it right, you can come to the conclusion that the total energy *is* conserved, and that it's *zero*. There's the positive energy of matter, radiation, et cetera, and then a negative energy of the gravitational field. But I tend to agree with Carroll's perspective in that
> I personally think it’s better to forget about the so-called “energy of the gravitational field” and just admit that energy is not conserved... | [
"The fact that energy can be neither created nor be destroyed is called the law of conservation of energy. In the form of the first law of thermodynamics, this states that a closed system's energy is constant unless energy is transferred in or out by work or heat, and that no energy is lost in transfer. The total i... |
[Meta] What books in your field have been published lately that are worthy of being added to the wiki for your topic area? | Do you mean the Ask Historians wiki? In general, adding books to the Japanese history section is something I really have been meaning to get around to.
But for new books specifically,
Last year's *[Samurai to Soldier, Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan](_URL_0_)* by D. Colin Jaundrill is going to be a must-add. I haven't read it in full yet, just done the scan-through and read a few parts that particularly interested me.
Summary:
> In Samurai to Soldier, D. Colin Jaundrill rewrites the military history of nineteenth-century Japan. In fifty years spanning the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the rise of the Meiji nation-state, conscripts supplanted warriors as Japan's principal arms-bearers. The most common version of this story suggests that the Meiji institution of compulsory military service was the foundation of Japan’s efforts to save itself from the imperial ambitions of the West and set the country on the path to great power status. Jaundrill argues, to the contrary, that the conscript army of the Meiji period was the culmination—and not the beginning—of a long process of experimentation with military organization and technology.
> Jaundrill traces the radical changes to Japanese military institutions, as well as the on-field consequences of military reforms in his accounts of the Boshin War (1868–1869) and the Satsuma Rebellions of 1877. He shows how pre-1868 developments laid the foundations for the army that would secure Japan’s Asian empire.
Jaundrill's filled a huge void here with this book.
| [
"Bokklubben World Library () is a series of classical books, mostly novels, published by the Norwegian Book Club since 2002. It is based on a list of the hundred best books, as proposed by one hundred writers from fifty-four countries, compiled and organized in 2002 by the Book Club. This list endeavors to reflect ... |
how do dead people vote? | As far as I know this is usually only an issue if someone died after the voter registers have been updated the last time.
Lets look at an extreme example:
Someone dies on the night before the election. Of course the people running the election do not know about it yet because their voter register is older than a few hours and had this person survived the night they would of course have been entiteled to vote. Now anyone could vote for the deceased person if they can convince the people at the voting station that they are in fact this dead person. After all the person at the voting station expects the dead person to turn up.
While this is an extreme example this could even take place with people who died earlier than the night before. Depending on the place you are voting in the voter registers might be considerably older because for example they have been updated the last time before absentee voting started. | [
"The rules governing the procedure for dealing with the death of a candidate occur in the Representation of the People Act 1983. Unless the deceased candidate was standing as an independent, their death results in the election being postponed whether it is a general election or a by-election. The poll is stopped im... |
why does english borrow so many words from other languages? | Can you provide a source for this 80% number? I highly doubt this is correct and I think you are misinterpreting information, but I am not a linguist nor a native English speaker... | [
"English, besides forming new words from existing words and their roots, also borrows words from other languages. This adoption of words from other languages is commonplace in many world languages, but English has been especially open to borrowing of foreign words throughout the last 1,000 years. The most commonly ... |
why do snakes stick out their tongues so much? | They are capturing scent particles from the air; once their tongue is back inside, they insert it into a smelling organ on the top of their mouth, the Jacobson's Organ. | [
"While most snakes must open their mouths before biting, African and Middle Eastern snakes belonging to the family Atractaspididae are able to fold their fangs to the side of their head without opening their mouth and jab a person.\n",
"Snake tongues are bifurcated, or forked, to enhance their ability to pick up ... |
my dog can't catch my cold. what prevents most pathogens from being able to infect multiple species? | Pathogens tend to evolve in parallel with their hosts, so a cold virus adapted by evolution to infect dogs is very unlikely to infect a human. It would be even less likely if it were adapted to infect reptiles or insects.
HOWEVER, some pathogens can and do jump the species barrier. Avian influenza, for example, originates in birds, and if a domestic species like chickens or ducks gets infected, then it's entirely possible for the virus to jump the species barrier. The huge danger there is that because this particular influenza virus didn't co-evolve with humans, it doesn't have the built-in evolutionary "off switch" that prevents it from killing its own host. That's where epidemics and pandemics come from.
HIV was also originally a disease in monkeys, which then jumped species to chimpanzees when the chimps ate the monkeys, and then it eventually jumped to humans some time in the 1920's, when hunters in Cameroon ate the chimps. At least, that's the current and most likely theory. | [
"A disadvantage is that any contact with pathogens may be fatal. This is because the animals have no protective bacterial microbiota on the skin or in the intestine or respiratory tract, and because they have no natural immunity to common infections as they have never been exposed to them.\n",
"It is highly trans... |
what happens in your body when you feel like puking after smoking too many cigarettes? | You're experiencing the symptoms of nicotine poisoning. Drink some water and lay off the cigs for a while. You'll be fine. | [
"Normal between-cigarettes discontinuation, in unrestricted smokers, causes mild but measurable nicotine withdrawal symptoms. These include mildly worse mood, stress, anxiety, cognition, and sleep, all of which briefly return to normal with the next cigarette. Smokers have worse mood than they would have if they we... |
How are we able to take a picture of a black hole if they dont emit or reflect any light? | We're basically looking at how the light from gas around the black hole is absorbed or distorted by the black hole. We're looking for a black circle, with gravitational lensing distorting the view of the gas around it. | [
"In other words, imagine a black point floating in a white void and a camera. For any position in space that we place the camera, there is a set of corresponding parameters (orientation, focal length, etc.) that will photograph that black point exactly the same way. Since \"C\" has an infinite number of members, on... |
What gives Blood that distinct smell? | See [this thread](_URL_0_) and [this thread](_URL_1_). | [
"The Scent of Blood (, also known as \"The Smell of Blood\") is a 2004 Italian thriller-drama film written and directed by Mario Martone. It was screened at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival in the Director's Fortnight section. It is based on a novel by Goffredo Parise.\n",
"The disease is named for the presence of s... |
why do we need to 'breathe oxygen' and why is it impossible for other living organisms to 'breathe' other stuff, like hydrogen? | Life that doesn't need oxygen is called anaerobic life, and there's plenty of it even right here on Earth. Mostly bacteria. In fact, you have plenty in your stomach. There are even a couple multicellular anaerobic life forms we know about, although they are in very remote and exotic locations (e.g., *underneath* the sea floor), and are still incredibly small compared to typical plants and animals.
However, most of the energy on Earth is locked up in organic compounds - compounds containing atomic carbon. The reason for this is that carbon is fairly abundant, but also a very flexible atom that has a lot of possible chemical reactions and compounds it can help form.
Organic compounds often can't be consumed as completely without oxygen for traditional combustion (burning) chemical reactions. So anaerobic bacteria tend to not get as much energy from the same food supply. That puts them at a big competitive disadvantage - if one species can digest its food fully with oxygen, and another species can only partially digest the same food without, the species that can use oxygen has a big evolutionary advantage.
We don't know that macroscopic (human-scale) anaerobic life is impossible. We do know we haven't found any of it on Earth. | [
"All aerobic creatures need oxygen for cellular respiration, which uses the oxygen to break down foods for energy and produces carbon dioxide as a waste product. Breathing, or \"external respiration\", brings air into the lungs where gas exchange takes place in the alveoli through diffusion. The body's circulatory ... |
How did Alexander's army transport sarissas long distances? | > It might work to split the shafts down the middle for travel, and maybe screw them back together when it's time to kill people, but we'd have found like a bajillion little metal pieces that screw together, and somebody would probably have mentioned it, right?
Guess what? You [answered your own question](_URL_1_). That little thing at the bottom is a coupling sleeve that joins the two halves of the spear shaft. (Apologies for the terrible image quality. Artist's impression [here](_URL_0_).)
If an army was suddenly attacked, the sarissa was not an ideal weapon; for effective use, there had to be room and time for the pike phalanx to get into formation. This is why Greek and Macedonian armies relied on a screen of light infantry and cavalry when on the march. The Macedonians also employed thousands of more flexible Greek hoplite mercenaries and the elite corps of *hypaspists* ("shieldbearers") in case there was hand-to-hand fighting to be done. So in a well-managed army there was no need for the sarissa to be always ready for action. | [
"In spring 334 BC, as a young man of about twenty-three, Seleucus accompanied Alexander into Asia. By the time of the Indian campaigns beginning in late in 327 BC, he had risen to the command of the élite infantry corps in the Macedonian army, the \"Shield-bearers\" (\"Hypaspistai\", later known as the \"Silvershie... |
how does a handheld device/laptop switch itself off after you tell it to? | The button triggers a rundown code that shuts down the system.
Your phone has an internal power system even when its off, so pressing the button to turn it on triggers the power cycle and it boots | [
"When the phone is turned on, it listens for a signal. If it receives a signal, it looks at the SID (being carried by the signal), and compares it with the one that is stored in the phone. Originally, in analog systems, the mobile would simply turn on the roaming indicator if the SID was not the single value stored... |
In the past was it socially unacceptable to be a racist at any point proir to say the late 1800'S? | The sociological and historical issues raised by your question are the subject of very lively academic debate right now.
Broadly speaking, there are two camps. One sees racism as a modern, western invention emerging from the late 18thC into the 19thC; classical antiquity and the pre-modern period in general are considered to be pre-racism. This is what I would call the 'standard account'. The opposing position has only gained traction in the past 10 years or so; this camp maintain that the scientific racisms of the modern period are directly related to the proto-racist structures of the Ancient world.
Addressing social acceptability : group discrimination and domination on the basis of 'race' (which, remember, is a biological fiction) is the historical *norm*, not the exception. There are historical moments in which racism was opposed and attacked, but they are few and even these did not involve all strata of society.
One example is the French Revolution. The abolition of slavery under the Revolution in 1794 included emancipation and, generally, the principle of nondiscriminatory racial equality. The Revolution failed, Napoleon reinstated slavery in 1802 and it wasn't abolished again until 1815. Emancipation didn't happen until 1848 and equal rights? They were always guaranteed by the Rights of Man and the Citizen, but antidiscrimination laws weren't passed until 1972.
Kind of a depressing answer, but finding any point in history - even recent history - when racism has been considered universally unacceptable by all strata of society is actually quite difficult. If you want to split hairs, different logics of racism have come and gone, but racial discrimination has very much been the standard.
Sources :
[Benjamin Isaac, *The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity*. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2004.](_URL_1_)
[Charles W Mills, *The Racial Contract*. Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2007.](_URL_2_)
[Audrey Smedley, *Race in North America : origin and evolution of a worldview*. Boulder : Westview Press, 2011 [1993].](_URL_4_)
[John M Hobson, *The Eurocentric Conception of Politics : western international theory, 1760-2010*. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2012.](_URL_3_)
Finally, I highly recommend Ta-Nehisi Coates' recent and very important cover story for the Atlantic Magazine : ['The Case for Reparations'.](_URL_0_) Every American should read every word of this.
Disclaimer : I study racial domination as exercised by European colonial powers and as a facet of contemporary neo-imperialism; my response reflects that. It would be really great to hear from some non-western specialists on the social acceptability and historical construction of racism in non-white contexts.
| [
"George M. Fredrickson has written that societal racism is deeply embedded in American culture and that in the 18th century, societal racism had already emerged with the purpose of maintaining a white-dominated society. and that \"societal racism does not require an ideology to sustain it so long as it was taken fo... |
How much magnetic flux does the moon have from the earth's field? | Well it's not even inside Earth's magnetosphere for most of it's orbit. Earth's magnetosphere extends about 10 Re (Earth radii) on the side towards the Sun, maybe ~20Re on the sides, and very long on the tail. The Moon orbits at around 66Re, so it only passes through Earth's field during near-full Moon phase when it's in the extended magnetotail.
But while it is passing through the magnetotail, the flux is: Moon's circumference * the field strength ~60Re back in the magnetotail. I'm guessing the field strength is in the neighborhood of 10 nT, and wikipedia tells me the Moon's circumference is about 11,000km, which I'm just going to knock down to 10,000km for ease of mental calculation. So that gives a flux of 0.01mT*10Mm=0.1 Weber.
[Here's a semi-relevant NASA page I found](_URL_0_) when I tried to quick-google a reference for the magnetic field strength at the Moon's orbital distance. It doesn't talk about flux but it does talk about the Moon passing through the magnetotail and effects, and confirms my guess that it's only in the magnetosphere when very near full Moon:
> The moon enters the magnetotail three days before it is full and takes about six days to cross and exit on the other side.
On a side note, I learned a quick-estimate value for the Moon's orbital distance: 10*geosynchronous orbit (which I have memorized as about 6.6Re). | [
"The Moon has an external magnetic field of about 1–100 nanoteslas, less than one-hundredth that of Earth. The Moon does not currently have a global dipolar magnetic field and only has crustal magnetization likely acquired early in its history when a dynamo was still operating. Theoretically, some of the remnant ma... |
How much did the central tenets of Christianity change when missionaries from Europe came over to the New World? | This is an interesting subject. The Jesuits did a lot of the early missionary work, and their story is well attested. Off the top of my head, (with regard to the Jesuits):
1. They were criticized for downplaying the transsubstantiation aspects of the Eucharist, probably because they didn't want any backsliding into ritual cannibalism.
2. They came to North American expecting to find the Devil's agents everywhere, and ended up finding just people - no more good or evil than any other peoples. This helped guide the Jesuit worldview from the medieval outlook towards the modern outlook.
| [
"After four decades of prosperous trading, the missionaries started the proselytisation around 1540 and during this period, foreign missionaries also made many new converts to Christianity. Early Roman Catholic missionaries, particularly the Portuguese, led by the Jesuit St Francis Xavier (1506–1552), expanded from... |
From the first Hydrogen-Hydrogen fusion event to reaching thermonuclear stability, how long does it take a proto-star to 'turn on' and become a real star? | It's complicated, and depends on the mass of the protostar. Massive stars can reach the main sequence in a million years or less, while the smallest possible stars (.08 solar mass) may take billions to reach the main sequence proper.
_URL_0_ | [
"Within 50 million years, the pressure and density of hydrogen in the centre of the protostar became great enough for it to begin thermonuclear fusion. The temperature, reaction rate, pressure, and density increased until hydrostatic equilibrium was achieved: the thermal pressure equalled the force of gravity. At t... |
what do all the words mean when it comes to headphone audio quality? | Not an expert, but I'll give this a go.
EQ stands for equalization. More generally in the audio world this refers to the ability to boost or lower the relative volume of sounds at various frequencies (i.e. lower or higher pitched tones) in order to emphasize certain parts of the music you're listening to. For example, if you're listening to hip-hop or heavy bass music, you may want to emphasize the low-end frequencies. In headphones, you won't really have the ability to control this yourself, but some headphones are built to make certain ranges of frequencies stand out.
Compression in my experience pretty much exclusively happens in mixing of audio (not in headphones), but this basically refers to lowering the volume of unusually loud sounds and increasing the volume of unusually low sounds in a particular song to make everything sound more cohesive; it would for example correct the problem of an extremely loud snare drum sound popping out of the mix at you.
Bass just refers to a low-frequency sound, think about those deep sounds that you can "feel" or the low whompy noises in dubstep, etc.
Hz is the symbol for Hertz, which is just a unit of measurement for frequency. The lower the number the lower the sound (like bass mentioned above), the higher the number the higher the sound (like a cymbal or a high-pitched scream)
Kbps stands for Kilobytes Per Second, and this is a measure of quality in an audio file. Basically, digital audio files are not a continuous stream of data, but work by taking "snapshots" of the sound and stringing them together in a stream our ears percieve as continuous. The more of these snapshots there are, the more accurately they represent the sound being recorded, and therefore the better the sound will be.
Hope that helps. | [
"Audiograms are produced using a piece of test equipment called an audiometer, and this allows different frequencies to be presented to the subject, usually over calibrated headphones, at any specified level. The levels are, however, not absolute, but weighted with frequency relative to a standard graph known as th... |
why does a sniper need a spotter, when both of them are using scopes to look at the target? and how does the spotter know the wind speed if there are no moving objects like trees or a flag? | They're both using devices that give them that information.
A spotter is used because while a sniper is certainly capable of gathering all that information and calculating it, having someone to feed him/her numbers speeds up the calculation of a long shot significantly.
That's especially important if lives are contingent on the sniper taking down a target quickly.
As for wind speed, etc., an electronic anemometer has been available for almost 2 decades now.
A spotter gets to position this and other devices and convey the data to the sniper in a single package. And the spotter isn't in the same place, so assuming good communication, you have a much wider "field of vision" based on the spotter's reports.
Wind speed, direction, presence of glass, movement, possible civilians nearby, etc. are all concerns for a sniper. A spotter alleviates many of those concerns and allows the sniper to focus on accuracy. | [
"Artillery spotters typically use their calibrated binoculars to walk fire onto a target. Here they know the approximate range to the target and so can read off the angle (+ quick calculation) to give the left/right corrections in meters.\n",
"Often in situations with multiple targets, snipers use relocation. Aft... |
does napalm self-ignite from contact with the air? | White phosphorous is used as an ignition agent in most napalm compositions, though older variants used thermite. White phosphorous self ignites in an oxygen environment. | [
"It does not ignite in air until heated to 300 °C and is insoluble in all solvents. It is not attacked by alkali and only slowly reacts with halogens. It can be oxidised by nitric acid to phosphoric acid.\n",
"Above 30 °C it can form explosive concentration of vapors with air. Its vapors are heavier than air. It ... |
How much water is needed to cool the sun down till it stops shining? | Honestly, it would probably only make it hotter.
The sun isn't burning by combustion, but by nuclear fusion. Two hydrogens go in and become bound, losing some mass by creating a high energy photon by E=mc^(2). Since water is H2O, you're just adding hydrogen to the plasma. The water molecules will likely dissociate quickly, and the oxygen will sink to the core and be surrounded by a fusing hydrogen mantle. The new atoms will act as an energy sink by taking some thermal energy in order to get them up to the star's temperature. Here's the kicker though- the energy required to get these hydrogen atoms up to the temperature of the stellar core is *a thousand times less* than the energy that will be released by fusion. The Coulomb barrier for fusion is on the order of *kilo* electron volts, while the energy released in hydrogen fusion events is measured in *mega* electron volts.
So adding water will probably only make your star burn hotter and faster.
So maybe we should just try to make a black hole. If we jack up the mass of the sun by more than about 20 times, it'll be more of a blue giant star, and when it burns out it'll likely go through a core-collapse creating a supernovae and a black hole, which will certainly stop shining.
There's a quicker way though. If we wanted to add mass until the star falls within it's own Schwarzchild radius, it'll form a black hole without going through the core collapse. For any specific density, there is a maximum amount of shit you can in one space have before it'll make a black hole.
p = M / R_s^(3) = M / (2 G M / c^2)^3 = c^6 / (8 G^3 M^2 )
So if p is the density of water (1000 kg/m^(3)), *c* the speed of light, and *G* the gravitational constant, then M is the mass threshold to create of the black hole with an amount of this constant density stuff.
M = sqrt( c^6 / 8 G^3 p)
[This gives about 10^8 solar masses.](_URL_0_) So just add 100 million suns worth of water to the sun, and you'll put it out for good. Be careful when you do this though because the resulting black hole will actually extend out well past the orbit of Mars.] Admittedly you could make this smaller by observing that I used the equation for a cube- you might try to solve for the mass if you use the volume of a *sphere* in the density calculation:
p = M / (4/3 * pi * R_s^(3))
| [
"BULLET::::- Yottajoule: The yottajoule (YJ) is equal to one septillion (10) joules. This is approximately the amount of energy required to heat all the water on Earth by 1 °C. The thermal output of the Sun is approximately 400 YJ per second.\n",
"The sun expands to its red giant phase. If the sun aged billions o... |
do alarm clocks really just sometimes not go off, or do we turn them off and forget about it? | I turn my alarms off sometimes without remembering, I usually have to change where my phone is every month or so to avoid it happening consistently as I need to actually find it. | [
"Alarms are triggered by a special type of toast notification for alarms. Due to hardware limitations, alarms cannot always appear on certain devices that are powered off. In order for an alarm to ring on a PC that is off, InstantGo must be included in the device. Prior to the Windows 10 Creators Update, Alarms & C... |
why do shady companies not work on making their company less shady? | It is cheap and it works on exactly the kind of people they want as customers. If you will fall for that, they can sell you anything as a follow-up. | [
"In a study on Bribery and Corruption in India conducted in 2013 by global professional services firm Ernst & Young (EY), a majority of the survey respondents from PE firms said that a company operating in a sector which is perceived as highly corrupt may lose ground when it comes to fair valuation of its business,... |
what do therapy dogs do? | First, there's a difference between therapy dogs and service dogs. Services dogs are trained and registered and they provide help with certain disabilities -- things like guiding the blind, alerting the deaf, helping people who are disabled, or sensing when someone has low blood sugar or is going to have an epileptic fit.
"Therapy" dogs are somewhat of a made-up category. They generally aren't trained and they can't be registered because there's no organization that does it. The dog doesn't actively do anything except provide companionship for the human.
Now, this *can* be therapeutic for people, especially if they have social anxiety or things like that, because the dog does provide something safe for them. However, these people are basically turning dogs into living security blankets.
The problem is, because of laws about legitimate service dogs -- they cannot be denied entry and you cannot ask the person what service the dog provides if its wearing an identifying harness -- people with therapy dogs are taking advantage of the system. Some of them do this by slapping a harness that says "therapy dog" on their pet, and others just insist that it's a therapy dog.
Unfortunately, people can't challenge them on the issue because of the laws covering service dogs. I've seen people with dogs in shopping carts at grocery stores and in the audience at live and movie theaters and other inappropriate places. The service dog industry is working to make it a lot harder for people to take advantage like this, but that takes time.
TL;DR: Not much, except serve as a living security blanket. Not to be confused with legitimate service dogs. | [
"A therapy dog is a dog that might be trained to provide affection, comfort and love to people in several locations. These dogs are defined but not covered or protected under the Federal Housing Act or Americans with Disabilities act. They also do not have public access rights with exception to the specific places ... |
Are pedophiles born with the sexual orientation, or is it developed throughout life? | This boils down to one of the biggest debates in psychology: nature vs nurture. I don't expect that you'll get a definitive answer, sorry. | [
"In 1993, sexologists Ray Blanchard and Kurt Freund published and discussed a series of case studies involving infantilists and noted a distinction between them and pedophiles. While pedophiles were attracted to children (and objects related to childhood) due to the desire for a child sexual partner, infantilists i... |
When was a US moon landing first conceived? Why go to the moon (other than it being hard)? | Officially at least, the date of May 8th, 1961 can be considered the date of conception for the actual Moon landing push. In other words, that is when the inside political backing and lobbying for the lunar mission actually began.
It was on that date that James Webb (then NASA Administrator) and Robert McNamara (then Secretary of Defense) presented a memo titled [*"Recommendations for our National Space Program: Changes, Policies, Goals"*](_URL_0_), to Vice-President Johnson and JFK, which outlined the reasoning behind why a manned lunar mission was important to the Space Race against the Soviets, and to American global prestige and the appearance of technological/military supremacy.
If you read the portion of the memo I linked to above, you can see the reasoning (even though it is sugar-coated) was to try to beat the Soviets there - plain and simple. In reality, exploration of our nearest celestial neighbor was entirely a distant secondary motive. Science and peaceful exploration was the argument that could be reasonably used to help sell the plan to the public (who had to pay for it), but the USSR had already voiced that goal of a manned lunar landing, and although at the time the USA was in second place in the Space Race in many eyes, America was in it for the long haul, so beating the Soviets to the Moon was achievable.
The end goal was of course not merely to get men to and from the Moon, but also because the technology that would be needed to be developed for that undertaking would trickle down massively, also being of paramount importance to US space-based military and reconnaissance efforts as well. The last line "*If we fail to accept this challenge, it may be interpreted as a lack of national vigor and capacity to respond..."* really shows that the appreciation of the propaganda value behind getting to the Moon first was clearly understood by the US science and political groups as well. They emphasized that point because they knew politicians have to typically be sold on science, and need to be made to see the propaganda/political value it has before they will agree to fund it.
At this time in 1961, the Soviets were definitely not behind the USA in the Space Race. Quite the opposite really. However, the race to the Moon would require a truly massive longer-duration technological and financial push, and that longer duration timeline (which Kennedy eventually set as 1969 - *"before this decade is out..."*) was one that the United States had a very good chance of outrunning the Soviets on.
To put it very simply, the Russians were committed heavily to the short distance game of low-Earth orbit manned operations, but the USA figured they could beat the Soviets in the marathon to the Moon if they got the full might of American technology, military and public/political financial support. | [
"The Moon was first reached in September 1959 by the Soviet Union's Luna 2, an unmanned spacecraft, followed by the first successful soft landing by Luna 9 in 1966. The United States' NASA Apollo program achieved the only manned lunar missions to date, beginning with the first manned orbital mission by Apollo 8 in ... |
the game skyrim. i've watched half a dozen videos about it, but don't get it. | It's an "open-world" RPG. Kinda like WoW, but tailored for a single player. Essentially, they've plopped a big sheet of land down; decorated it with trees, mountains, and other nature stuff; built some towns, cities, dungeons, and people or creatures to populate them; wrote stories and quests for the player to do; then told the player to have at thee. It's exploratory fun. | [
"The game can be played either in the traditional 2D viewpoint, or in an optional over the shoulder 3D view. Also announced was the ability to swap \"trophies\" using \"StreetPass\" and the ability to launch into battles when in proximity of another \"Street Fighter IV\" player. The game will also feature Download ... |
Why wouldn't my friend's idea for "free energy" work? | How do you produce an electric field? Suppose that you produce the electric field by separating positive charges from negative charges, in a configuration like a capacitor. So imagine that you have negative charges on a plate on the left and positive charges on a plate on the right, and an electric field in between. In order to produce the electric field you have had to do work on the charges to separate them; you have expended energy in doing mechanical work on the electrons and converted that energy into the potential energy between the positive and negative charges. Now suppose what happens when your E-field produces and separates a particle-antiparticle pair. The positively charged particle will drift toward the negatively charged plate, and the negatively charged antiparticle will drift toward the positively charged plate. When they reach the plates, they will annihilate a corresponding particle or anti-particle in the plate, thus 1) radiating mass-energy in the form of photons and 2) reducing the total number of positively charged particles on the positively charged place, and negatively charged particles on the negatively charged plate, so that the E-field between the two plates will be smaller than what you started with, and total energy is conserved. Since the E-field between the two plates is reduced, you can easily see that this process cannot continue indefinitely without continuing to supply energy to build up charge again on the two plates. Therefore your friend's idea does not produce free energy. | [
"The free energy principle is that systems—those that are defined by their enclosure in a Markov blanket—try to minimize the difference between their model of the world and their sense and associated perception. This difference can be described as \"surprise\" and is minimized by continuous correction of the world ... |
will placing the internet under title ii allow it to be censored like radio or will it allow the internet to continue to stay open and free? | Private telephone conversations are covered under Title II, and there's no censorship of telephone calls.
In practice, censoring the Internet isn't directly possible. You can make a separate net, not the Internet, which you censor. China, for example, does this. There is no Internet in China, only "China-net".
If someone is telling you Tittle II will censor the Internet, they are trying to turn you against regulated net neutrality. These are considered "bad people" around here, as Reddit's an advocate for net neutrality (so that you can get to Reddit). | [
"Unless the censor has total control over all Internet-connected computers, such as in North Korea or Cuba, total censorship of information is very difficult or impossible to achieve due to the underlying distributed technology of the Internet. Pseudonymity and data havens (such as Freenet) protect free speech usin... |
if a plane was on a conveyor belt, could it take off? | The question is actually underspecified, which is why it causes such debate trying to answer it. Specifically, "perfectly matchesa the speed of the plane" isn't specific enough.
If a plane is moving forward at 100 kph and then you place it on this treadmill, what would happen?
If the answer is "the surface of the treadmill would move backwards at 100 kph", then the plane would take off just fine. Plane wheels aren't attached to the engines, so this would just cause the wheels to spin at twice the current speed of the plane at all times.
If, instead, the answer is "the treadmill would move as fast as necessary to keep the plane from moving forward relative to the ground", then you'd need an impossibly fast treadmill. The instant the plane started moving forward, the treadmill would need to start moving at incredible speeds to slow it back down, because the plane wheels can spin freely. That'd probably destroy either the treadmill or the plane wheels if they're made of any conventional material, which would indeed keep the plane from taking off. | [
"Depending on the situation, airlifted supplies can be delivered by a variety of means. When the destination and surrounding airspace is considered secure, the aircraft will land at an appropriate airport or airbase to have its cargo unloaded on the ground. When landing the craft, or distributing the supplies to a ... |
why do sweaters lose their softness after you put them through the wash? | It isn't the wash but rather the heated dryer that kills sweater softness. Check the lint trap in your dryer. All the soft fluff in it used to be in your clothes! The heat if a dryer also burns the tiny soft fibers in sweaters. Air dry your soft sweaters to keep them soft. | [
"Sweaters are often maintained by washing or dry cleaning and the use of a lint roller or pill razor. But airing (and rinsing in pure water if necessary) is considered better than washing with soap or another detergent, especially when not all of the natural oil (lanolin) has been removed from the wool. The use of ... |
how do cell phones and other electronics randomly break after a few years, or start glitching? | Generally I would say most electronics begin to fail to properly function due to one or several parts not working. This can be through excessive heat, water damage, gradual corrosion of some parts by chemical reactions with oxygen or other reactive substances, through shock or stress such as dropping the device, contamination of parts and short circuiting. In cases such as your iphone it isn't the phone 'forgetting' what it's supposed to be doing, as it may seem, it's simply faulty connnections between interior parts.
For an example, imagine your phone is a hiking track and every function your phone has is a different pathway. If the path for the off button became flooded or bushes grew over the path then you can't get to it. The path would end and you would not reach that spot on the trail. Your phone may have a similar problem, the part of the phone which ends phone calls may have a faulty connection. Therefore every time you press the button to end the call the phone does everything it normally would, it walks all the way along the trail to the point where the button is and then stops at the overgrown bushes because that is where the trail appears to end. If the parts are not properly connected with all the right materials then the phone can not complete the desired function because it is physically incapable and that translates to no reaction on-screen. | [
"A cell phone's shelf life is only about 24 months for the average user. This means that newer cell phone models are constantly put up on the market to replace older ones. This is as a result of the rapid progression of technology in the mobile industry. According to Matt Ployhar of Intel, the industry is rapidly e... |
Have there ever been any historical misunderstandings due to someone's bad handwriting? | I believe The town and area of Nome, Alaska was so named when a British vessel spotted and marked down next to the unmapped point "*name?*". This was misconstrued into the name "Nome", which it remains to this day. | [
"Investigators have not said whether they have had the handwriting analyzed. The website \"Crime Watch Daily\" had an expert, Peggy Walla, look at photos of the note. She noted that it was clean of the blood reportedly found splattered all over the room, suggesting it was written either away from the crime scene or... |
Was working at Jimmy John's today when I customer came in and was severely allergic to cucumbers but could eat pickles, how's that possible? | Food allergies are often caused by an allergic response to a protein. Proteins are very large molecules made out a long chain of chemical groups called "amino acids." These chains are "crumpled up" into a 3D shape, and the exact 3D shape is what the body recognizes as an allergen. If the protein is unfolded, then the body may no longer recognize it. If a protein is exposed to heat or to acidic conditions, like they would in the pickling process, it can unfold and lose its 3D shape. | [
"Some people are allergic to coriander leaves or seeds, having symptoms similar to those of other food allergies. In one study, 32% of pin-prick tests in children and 23% in adults were positive for coriander and other members of the family Apiaceae, including caraway, fennel, and celery. The allergic symptoms may ... |
the feud between the standing rock sioux tribe and the dakota access crude-oil pipeline | It comes down to the confirmed fact that as of 2014 more than 18.4 Million Gallon of Oil and oil related chemicals have spilled/leaked/misted in North Dakota alone since their oil boom started.
The people that are trying to make this Cowboys vs. Indians are ridiculous. This is not about race.
Oil pipelines are busting all over the country, the world, today. Entire towns are being evacuated. States of emergency all over, today, Most recently in Montana, also Prince Albert declared state of emergency from their spill, From Ohio to Oklahoma to we have pipelines failing and water both public and private contaminated beyond repair.
Enough is enough. Anyone interested should research with Sierra Club and Indian Country Today. Or with Standing Rock Sioux. Or talk to people living in the affected areas. You can get right wing pro oil opinions on mainstream media.
It just so happens this latest attempt by the oil oligarchs is near the Standing Rock Sioux Res. When and if the pipeline fails at some point, the river and water will poisoned beyond recovery. Just as it has been across our country and all continents. Water is Life.
The people, white, black, native, french, South American, all peoples are being moved to speak out for NoDAPL and gather and say enough is enough. It has been peaceful and historic. So many cell phone cameras
Families including women and children are being held at gunpoint and searched entering the Sacred Stone and other peaceful camp sites. Cell phone towers shit down. Water was shut off. Nat'l Guard is now there. But with technology the world is watching this time.
| [
"Many Sioux tribes have said that the pipeline threatens the Tribe’s environmental and economic well-being, and that it has damaged and destroyed sites of great historic, religious, and cultural significance. The tribe has expressed concern over leaks because the pipeline passes under Lake Oahe, which serves as a m... |
when "persons" is appropriate | "People" refers to a body of people, collectively. It generally implies that they have something in common or are in some way cohesive.
"Persons" means than one person, in the sense of several individuals.
> "The people of this country want justice!"
> "Persons on premises subject to search."
In the first case, you're wanting to refer to a group by their common nationality; in the second case, you're just wanting to say that any person found may be searched, even if more than one, not that you're going to collectively search a group (or even that one person you're searching is associated with another). | [
"BULLET::::- (plural ) is the formal, official and impersonal \"you\". It is the form used when people take part in a situation merely as representatives of social roles, where personal acquaintance is not a factor. It is thus used in institutions, business, bureaucracy, advertisements, by broadcasters, by shopkeep... |
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