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why are energy and mass similar? | All mass is energy, but not all energy is mass. This is a result of Einstein's special theory of relativity. | [
"Energy and mass are manifestations of one and the same underlying physical property of a system. This property is responsible for the inertia and strength of gravitational interaction of the system (\"mass manifestations\"), and is also responsible for the potential ability of the system to perform work or heating... |
Why do medicine and other fields use mmHg (millimeters of mercury) as opposed to the more standard SI unit Pascals? | It's probably because of the mercury sphygmomanometer, the device that's been used for over a century to measure blood pressure. Since it actually measures pressure in terms of a column of mercury, that's how pressures are described. People still describe a "normal" blood pressure as 120/80 (mm of Hg) rather than 16k/10.6k (pascals).
Mercury sphygmomanometers are traditionally considered the most reliable instruments for measuring blood pressure. In many countries (including the US), there are federal requirements to use them when reporting blood pressure in clinical trials, for example. For high-risk patients, where knowing the exact blood pressure is essential, mercury sphygmomanometers are preferred.
Part of this is simply because of long use. Most studies where blood pressure measured by a sphygmomanometer was validated against directly measured intra-arterial pressure [were done on mercury sphygmomanometers](_URL_1_). Studies on the accuracy and repeatability of electronic or aneroid sphygmomanometers [are routinely verified against the mercury gold standard](_URL_0_). In fact, most aneroid and electronic sphygmomanometers sold in the market come with pamphlets advising the user to periodically calibrate them against a mercury sphygmomanometer.
That's not to say that mercury doesn't have its own drawbacks. They require periodic maintenance too, they need to be properly used (the mercury column must be perfectly vertical), there is error introduced by the nurse or clinician listening to the Korotkoff sounds, there are environmental concerns over mercury as a toxin. But because of long use and the sheer number of studies that have validated their measurements over a century, there's a lot of trust given to them. The American Heart Association [recommends using them](_URL_2_).
One reason for this reliance is simplicity -- it's just a column of liquid behaving as liquids must under gravity. Verifying that it's in working order is easy to do without any specialized equipment. You can look at the column to see there's no breakage, no mercury "stuck" somewhere. You can ensure that it's vertical with a spirit level and plumb line.
This is much harder to do with an aneroid machine. Has the spring weakened? How would you know, unless you had another machine that was known to be accurate to check the readings against? Or the newer electronic machines with piezoelectric sensors and fancy electronics. They need a technician and probably factory equipment to check.
Mercury machines also are more reliable in the hands of a trained physician or nurse. It's not very hard to learn to recognize Korotkoff sounds and to use them. On the other hand, electronic machines that depend on oscillometry have problems when the patient has hardened arteries (arteriosclerosis) or arrhythmias or paradoxical pulse, or a number of conditions. In cases like these, most physicians would rather trust their own judgment than rely on the electronics. | [
"One millimetre of mercury is approximately 1 Torr, which is of standard atmospheric pressure ( ≈ pascals). Although the two units are not equal, the relative difference (less than ) is negligible for most practical uses.\n",
"The difference between one millimeter of mercury and one torr, as well as between one a... |
where did blacksmiths go after industrialization? | Other jobs. A skilled blacksmith is probably a very valuable worker in many other professions. Since blacksmiths would have a very advanced knowledge of metals and toolmaking, factories would probably be very interested in hiring them.
Another point is that jobs don't die immediately. When industrial machines are invented that can produce things more efficiently, the reality is that most regions don't have immediate access to those new machines. It would take many years for mass-produced items to completely take over for handmade goods.
The Industrial Revolution happened between 1760 and 1820 (or 1840). 60-80 years is longer than any one person would be working, so many blacksmiths during that era would have most likely lived their entire lives as smiths, and done good business throughout. | [
"Shelburne Museum’s Blacksmith Shop represents the trade as it was practiced at the turn of the 20th century. Both the efficient, electric blower, which replaced the wood and leather bellows still resting by the forge, and the electric trip-hammer enabled smiths, who at that time often found themselves working alon... |
what causes that feeling in your chest when you're really horny? | I'm going to take a stab at this one, someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
As far as I have always known, when we become aroused we go through a stage of vasocongestion which is in layman's terms, a sex flush, or rather an increased blood flow. Apparently this affects women more than men with almost 50% increasing chance of this happening to women.
During the sex flush, light pinkish spots could develop under the breasts and spread to other parts of your body such as your face, arms, chest, etc. It also darkens the clitoris and the walls of the vagina. For males, the flush could start near the upper abdomen and then spreads to your chest, face and the rest of your body.
Other changes include an increase in heart rate as well as in blood pressure, feeling hot and flushed and perhaps experiencing tremors. | [
"Chest pain is a major indication of coronary ischemia. If chest pain occurs while exercising, or during sex, but it doesn't persist after rest, it may be coronary ischemia, or what is called, \"angina\". Some people characterize the pain they feel as though an elephant is sitting on their chest.\n",
"Chest pain ... |
server wages in the u.s. are they actually making minimum wage? | Yes, an employer is required to compensate them up to minimum wage if they don't get it in tips.
If you're a server and work decent hours and can't earn minimum wage in tips, you're probably a terrible server. | [
"Waiting on tables is (along with nursing and teaching) part of the service sector, and among the most common occupations in the United States. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that, as of May 2008, there were over 2.2 million persons employed as servers in the U.S.\n",
"Because crowdworkers are considere... |
why can my phone accurately recognize spoken language in a crowded hallway but captchas are still used to prove you're human? | There's a secret trick, *your phone* doesn't accurately recognize spoken language in a crowded hallway. The audio is uploaded to Google's huge cluster of computers dedicated to the cause.
It actually takes a lot of processing power to do voice. | [
"CAPTCHAs based on reading text — or other visual-perception tasks — prevent blind or visually impaired users from accessing the protected resource. However, CAPTCHAs do not have to be visual. Any hard artificial intelligence problem, such as speech recognition, can be used as the basis of a CAPTCHA. Some implement... |
According to some /badhistory posts, the treaty of Versailles wasn't that harsh at all in comparison to other treaties. The general idea is that Germany's "crisis" was not a factor for WWII, and in fact this crisis was sort of a lie by Hitler and nazis to go to war. How right is this angle? | Not to discourage anybody from writing a response but a similar question was answered quite well here: _URL_0_ | [
"The Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, sounded the death knell of German power and prestige. Like many Germans of the period, Hitler (who still held Austrian citizenship at the time) believed that the treaty was a betrayal, with the country having been \"stabbed in the back\" by its own government, par... |
why do wine bottles usually use corks instead of lids or caps? | Yes, it is to do with the fermentation process and allowing oxygen to enter the bottle as it ages.
Fermentation is what we call it when the yeast (living organisms) change the grape juice by eating the sugar and creating the alcohol and flavors of the finished wine.
*Many wines develop undesirable aromas under anaerobic –no oxygen– conditions; a small amount of oxygen will eliminate those trace* [*thiol compounds*](_URL_2_) *responsible for the aroma of rotten eggs* [*or burnt rubber*](_URL_0_)*. Oxidation products also react with the* [*red anthocyanin molecules*](_URL_3_) *from the grapes to create stable pigments in red wine.*
*The way a bottle is sealed will directly affect how much* [*oxygen passes into the wine*](_URL_1_) *each year. That will directly affect the aging trajectory and determine when that wine will be at its “best.”*
[*_URL_4_](_URL_5_) | [
"Although cork was historically chosen to seal wine bottle for other reasons (including its inert nature, impermeability, flexibility, sealing ability, and resilience), cork's poisson's ratio of zero provides another advantage. As the cork is inserted into the bottle, the upper part which is not yet inserted does n... |
Why do medieval depictions of classical or biblical events show them with contemporary clothing etc? | Take a look at this section from the popular questions section of the wiki talking about [how people in the past viewed the future](_URL_0_). The broad answer to that particular question is that, before the Industrial Revolution, life changed very slowly or not at all. It was difficult or impossible to observe technological and cultural changes within a single lifetime.
How does this answer your question? Well, let's extrapolate backward: How would someone in 12th Century Saxony have imagined Julius Caesar? How would someone in 8th Century Asturias have imagined the Biblical siege at Jericho? The answer: "why, things would be just the same then as they are now! After all, why would anything be different?"
So: it works backward as well as forward. If it's impossible for you to conceive of a world where anything could change then you're unlikely to imagine that the past was "different" in some meaningful or even superficial way (clothing, weaponry, architecture, etc). | [
"From the end of the 18th century some scholars have suggested that certain elements in medieval Christian art reflect images found in Mithraic reliefs. Franz Cumont was among these scholars, although he studied each motif in isolation rather than in context. Cumont suggested that after the triumph of the Christian... |
what factors influence breast size? | The biggest determinant is genetics. Aside from that, the person's weight and fat deposits (more fat in the breast area means bigger breasts), and hormones. Hormones would be the 2nd biggest, as estrogen makes breasts enlarge or shrink (many women notice changes in breast size which correlates with their menstrual cycle). | [
"The morphologic variations in the size, shape, volume, tissue density, pectoral locale, and spacing of the breasts determine their natural shape, appearance, and position on a woman's chest. Breast size and other characteristics do not predict the fat-to-milk-gland ratio or the potential for the woman to nurse an ... |
In the 1980s why was the public and government so accepting of ozone layer science, when today many are unconvinced by climate science? Were there efforts by industrialists to spread misinformation about the hole in the ozone layer, and prevent regulation? | Hi, check out this recent response by /u/Holokyn-kolokyn
* [In the late 80's and 90's the depleting ozone layer was a huge environmental issue. Was there a lot of lobbying against repairing it or deniers of sorts such as we see in the climate debate today?](_URL_0_) | [
"Ozone research has remained at the forefront of atmospheric science for many years because stratospheric ozone shields the Earth's surface (and its inhabitants) from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Since recent declines in stratospheric ozone have been linked to human activity, accurate long-term measurements of oz... |
What caused Venus' runaway greenhouse effect? | Since early Venus would have been slightly warmer than the Earth (due simply to being closer to the Sun), the balance of the [carbonate-silicate cycle](_URL_0_) on the planet would have been shifted slightly in favour of carbon dioxide production, instead of carbonate production (which is what happened on the Earth).
CO2 production then means you have an increase in the greenhouse effect, which drives the temperature higher still, initiating the positive feedback. Additional feedback would have been caused by water vapour evaporated off any water bodies on the planet, and if this was enough to 'dry out' the surface it would also have affected the carbonate-silicate cycle.
**HOWEVER.** It may be a lot more complicated than this, and will have depended strongly on what Venus was like in its youth, something we are very unsure about. | [
"The runaway greenhouse effect is used in astronomical circles to refer to a greenhouse effect that is so extreme that oceans boil away and render a planet uninhabitable, an irreversible climate state that happened on Venus. The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report states that \"a 'runaway greenhouse effect'—analogous to V... |
AskScience AMA Series: I am paleontologist Hans Sues, I study late Paleozoic and Mesozoic vertebrates. Ask Me Anything! | Just got the most hilarious commentary with the lovely headline "You are stupid - but Satan loves you"
I quote:
"Just seen you going to answer questions on Reddit about Palizoic and Mezosoic eras being what you claim are 65 to 540 million year ago.
You're obviously a simpleton but even so you may be able to operate a calculator and work out this equashun: Earthworms build topsoil at the rate of one inch per five years.
Therefore if Earth was 540 MYO there would be 540 divided by 5 = 108 million inches of topsoil everywhere.
Clearly there isn't and therefore you head has been stuffed with garbage.
Darwin actually proved Earth is young and The Flood was a worldwide catastrophe about 4,350 year ago and during the 330 days of downpour, inundations, drain-off and drying all the land creatures were buried in deep sediments that idiots like you label Mesozic, Cretinous etc.
Mary Schweitzer has had the grace to admit that she know her silly 65MYO dinosaur tissue is wrong but she is going to believe it anyway - so why are you so deluded as to believe there was masses of dinosaurs 540 MYA?
Instead of prattling nonsense why not do the world a favour and go poking about the secret storerooms and drag out some of those Nephilim giant bones?"
This, folks, is why we need to get better science education in our schools! | [
"The history of invertebrate paleozoology (also spelled \"palaeozoology\") differs from the history of paleontology in that the former usually emphasizes paleobiology and the paleoecology of extinct marine invertebrates, while the latter typically emphasizes the earth sciences and the sedimentary rock remains of te... |
Does freezing vegetables "destroy" nutrients? | Quite the opposite, the 'institute of food reasearch' _URL_0_ studies have found that frozen vegetables usually have superior nutritional quality to their 'fresh' counterparts. This is because frozen vegetables are frozen at the peak of their readiness, immediately after harvesting, whereas 'fresh' vegetables may take days to reach a supermarket shelf, by which time much of the nutrient content has been lost.
That's a very simplistic picture though as it assumes a long journey from farm to shop - if you buy and cook your veg right after it's been harvested, directly from the farm or grower, you may be better off with fresh and if your frozen veg is processed in a way that adds salt or sugars (the IFR studies were looking at British brands where no additives are used) than that can skew the frozen veg to be less healthy.
As to 'freezing causes loss of nutrients' this isn't the 1970s, the modern fast-freeze process is very efficient and does not cause this problem, it is added salts and sugars in some brands of frozen foods that are the nutritional issue in modern diets, not the freezing process.
| [
"Later research has demonstrated that the substances ingested generally do not provide the mineral or nutrient in which patients are deficient. As the people start eating nonfoods, pica can also cause the nutritional deficiencies with which it is associated. In one case study, pagophagia was reported to \"cause\" i... |
does our vision have a limit? | Can you see galaxies however many light years away? Sure.
You don't really see distance. You see the light particles contacting the back of your retina. So if there's light bouncing off of the wall on the opposite side of the hallway and its been in existence long enough for the light to reach your retinas, you'll see the light. If not... you won't.
Where vision breaks down with distance is the loss of focus and refraction as more light particles bounce and scatter the farther away you are.
Source: I wear glasses. | [
"In the United States, any person with vision that cannot be corrected to better than 20/200 in the best eye, or who has 20 degrees (diameter) or less of visual field remaining, is considered legally blind or eligible for disability classification and possible inclusion in certain government sponsored programs.\n",... |
what is a zero-day attack? | Essentially it's a computer attack that happens for unknown reasons.
Look at it this way: say some researcher found a flaw in a program. He notifies the world of this vulnerability. Months go by, then one day some hacker exploits this flaw. This is *not* a zero-day attack. The flaw was known about for months.
A zero-day attack exploits a flaw that was previously unknown. It's called "zero-day" because zero days pass between when people found out about the flaw and when it was exploited. | [
"A zero-day (also known as 0-day) vulnerability is a computer-software vulnerability that is unknown to, or unaddressed by, those who should be interested in mitigating the vulnerability (including the vendor of the target software). Until the vulnerability is mitigated, hackers can exploit it to adversely affect c... |
Because we know approximately when the Big Bang happened, doesn't that mean the universe can't be infinite? [Sorry if remedial] | > I've been told to imagine the history of the universe (matter) as an expanding bubble commenced by the big bang.
Whoever told you that was mistaken; the big bang did not launch a bunch of matter out into some nether void. Rather, it was the rapid expansion of all of space.
> It seems to me that logic requires infinity to have no beginning, right?
Not at all. Let us imagine that the universe is one-dimensional. We'll represent the galaxies in it by an infinite number of balls evenly spaced in a line. For concreteness, let's label the balls with integers. We'll pick some ball to be **0** and then go out from there; the two closest balls to **0** are **1** and **-1**, then we have **2** and **-2**, and so on. We have an infinite number of balls—one for each integer. Now, let's define a unit of distance equal to the spacing between the balls *right now*. Then the distance between two balls is just their difference. We can denote this by the letter d, so that, for example,
d(**2**,**5**) = 3 and d(**5,-7**) = 12.
Good? Alright, now I'm going to tell you this infinite set of balls is *expanding*. The *real* distance between them is given by multiplying the above distance by the time, t, where the current time is t = 1. So when t = 2, we have
d(**2**,**5**) = 2\*3 = 6, and d(**5**,**-7**) = 2\*(12) = 24.
Great. Now, let's run time *backward* and see what happens. At any positive time, we'll still have an infinite number of balls extending out in both directions from **0** (also, remember that which ball we chose to call **0** was arbitrary). But what about when t gets to 0? At that moment *and that moment only* our infinite collection of balls have collapsed to a single point; the distance between any two balls is 0.
Thus, in this model we have a 'universe' that is expanding, started in a singularity, and yet is infinite for all times after that singularity.
Our universe is basically just a three-dimensional version of that (except that things get weird when you let the time get very close to 0, and we don't *really* know what was going on at that time). | [
"Carroll has also worked on the arrow of time problem. He and Jennifer Chen posit that the Big Bang is not a unique occurrence as a result of all of the matter and energy in the universe originating in a singularity at the beginning of time, but rather one of many cosmic inflation events resulting from quantum fluc... |
why do bacteria make us sick? why do some bacteria help us? why can't they just chill out in a hosts body and not do anything? | Most of them *do* just chill out and coexist peacefully. your skin, inside your nose, all along your intestines, you have more bacterial cells in and on you than you have *human* cells. One main advantage of these established bacteria populations is they are stable, and stop unwanted or new bacteria from moving in and setting up shop (new ones might harm us)
Bacteria in your intestines also help us, by digesting stuff we can't and releasing vitamins like additional forms of vitamin K that can *only* be produced by bacteria.
Some bacteria are not normal to us, like salmonella (harmless to a bird or reptile though), and they can make us quite sick. Others live in soil like Clostridium tetani that produces tetanus toxin, if it gets into a puncture wound it can be fatal (the bacteria can't live in an oxygen environment but it loves dark wet holes, and produces toxin that poison us)
Even different related species, or strains of the same species, can act very different, bacteria can change their genetic code more easily than animals because they reproduce faster and can take in RNA/DNA from other bacteria, picking up new abilities (like sharing antibiotic resistance genes) | [
"We treat bacteria as an ever-present enemy even though there are only a small number that actually cause disease, and by accident in most cases. Bacteria normally do not gain anything by causing illness or death in their hosts. Our illness is mostly caused by our immune system doing too great of a job in response ... |
If an asteroid that were bigger than earth pass by close enough so that we are dragged into its gravitational pull? | Asteroids are smaller than the earth...
> Asteroids vary greatly in size, from almost 1000 kilometres for the largest down to rocks just tens of metres across. The three largest are very much like miniature planets: they are roughly spherical, have at least partly differentiated interiors, and are thought to be surviving protoplanets. The vast majority, however, are much smaller and are irregularly shaped; they are thought to be either surviving planetesimals or fragments of larger bodies.
For reference the diameter of the earth at the equator is 12756.1 km | [
"Because of the universality of gravitation, affecting as it does all mass alike, the asteroid would be accelerated almost uniformly as a whole, with only tidal forces (which should be extremely small) causing any stresses to its internal structure.\n",
"For larger asteroids ( 100m to 1 km across), prediction is ... |
why does it matter if barak obama is a muslim? | Despite the fact that the US claims to have separation of church and state, religion still plays a factor in politics. Because Christianity is the predominant religion in the US, the people tend to want their leaders to be Christian. Also, the general public thinks all Muslims are terrorists because of extremist groups. | [
"Though according to his own profession and some others, Obama is a practicing Christian and he was chiefly raised by his mother and her Christian parents, his father, Barack Obama, Sr., with whom he lived only as a baby, was characterized by Obama as being a Muslim-raised atheist. Also, his stepfather, Lolo Soetor... |
why do some people not experience addiction withdrawal symptoms? | I'd like for you to consider the possibility you are in denial. | [
"Drug abuse, including alcohol and prescription drugs, can induce symptomatology which resembles mental illness. This can occur both in the intoxicated state and during the withdrawal state. In some cases these substance-induced psychiatric disorders can persist long after detoxification from amphetamine, cocaine, ... |
What made steppe invaders so effective and consistently dangerous throughout history? | Horses are the key.
The steppe peoples could muster horses in numbers undreamt of by their more sedentary neighbors. Until the 19th century, horses were the most powerful elements of warfare.
The people you are referring to, inner asian steppe people, were always lightly populated and nomadic (to semi-nomadic in latter days) because this was the most useful way to live if you were managing large herds of, you guessed it, horses.
The idea that their influence and danger was isolated is ludicrous.
For every period in Chinese history we can see a major power on the steppe as deeply connected to that period's exigencies.
The work of Victor Mair has opened up many questions as to the role of steppe peoples in the development of the earliest Chinese civilizations. His tentative conclusions are far more radical than the old civilized vs barbarian dichotomy of chinese historiography. If we then look at the **Han dynasty** - we see an analogous rise on the steppe of the Xiongnu - the Han's great antagonists. The next period, that of the **Northern and Southern dynasties**, we see again major involvement from the "barbarians" who made up most of the northern kingdoms.
The **Tang Dynasty**'s imperial family were an old northern family with (likely) significant barbarian bloodlines. Though they worked hard to hide this fact!
They were brought down by increased pressure from several areas, one important one being the Khitan steppe nomads (who became more semi-nomadic) and the nascent Xi Xia kingdom.
The **Song Dynasty** had their fare share of difficulty from Steppe peoples, particularly the Khitans and the Xi Xia. The northern Song was of course brought down by an invasion of, you guessed it again, steppe semi-nomads from manchuria, the **Jin**.
We all know the next phase of the story - the great Khans.
But what is often ignored is that the mongols **continued to pose an existential threat** to the Chinese polity throughout the 14th-early 18th centuries. The **Ming Dynasty**'s supposed isolationism, when they pulled the plug on the Zheng He voyages in the 15th century, had more to do with revenue and the costs of war on the northern borders than it did with actual isolationist policies. Most of the Ming ink spilled by bureaucrats dealing with foreign policy was for the Mongol threat.
The **Qing Dynasty** was the second invasion of the Manchurians, semi-nomadic northerners. Aside from their own steppe credentials, the Qing also actively recruited Mongol generals - such as [Sengge Rinchen](_URL_0_) who commanded the Qing forces in the 2nd Opium war.
So, for TL;DR - Steppe peoples in the case study of China, presented above, were **a consistent existential threat** to the Han-based Chinese civilization. The greatest factor in their military prowess was the Horse, which lived in abundance on the steppes. This fostered both a nomadic and martial culture among the steppe peoples. | [
"Even harder than keeping a steppe empire together was governing conquered lands outside the region. While the steppe peoples of Central Asia found conquest of these areas easy, they found governing almost impossible. The diffuse political structure of the steppe confederacies was maladapted to the complex states o... |
when a human is buried in a coffin, what actually happens with the dead organic matter? | depends how much embalming fluid there is in their veins. generally, after 10 years there's a lot of liquid in there, recognizable skin and bones lots of hair and a dank smell. if the coffin leaks and doesn't flood they get leathery but if it collapses its usually just dirt and bones. i woked at a cemetery. people move and a lot of times they want loved ones exhumed and cremated. the dead travel better as ashes. one time we dug up a teenaged overdose victim from the 70s. her father was retiring to California and wanted her near. she was perfectly preserved and still beautiful. | [
"Generally speaking, human remains are best preserved in cool, dark, dry conditions while wrapped in acid-free (non-buffered) tissue and packing materials. Corporeal materials should not be stored in or near any wood or in any containers which previously housed wood due to potentially increased lignin levels, which... |
why is 50 shades of grey rated r and not x? | They most likely toned down the sex in order to get an R rating. An X rating is pretty much a death sentence for a film trying to be successful mainstream | [
"More recently the sex scenes from the controversial film \"Fifty Shades of Grey\" were edited and received an R-18 rating from the MTRCB, due to the various protest from religious groups. However, its sequels \"Fifty Shades Darker\" and \"Fifty Shades Freed\" were shown uncut and received an R-18 rating.\n",
"On... |
; if marijuana “stays in the system” for a week or two, why are humans sober after an hour or two? if it’s in the system, is it technically intoxication for all those days | If I'm recalling my drugs class correctly the effects of marijuana come from it activating the cannabinoid receptors in the brain which are specifically designed to react to marijuana and things like it. Not all of the pot goes directly to these receptors in your brain(the site of action), but ends up hanging out in your fat cells for a while. So if it isn't activating these receptors it really isn't intoxication. | [
"A report from the University of Colorado, Montana State University, and the University of Oregon found that on average, states that have legalized medical cannabis had a decrease in traffic-related fatalities by 8–11%. The researchers hypothesized \"it’s just safer to drive under the influence of marijuana than it... |
how do historians or linguists decode and translate an ancient language that hasn't been spoken in a long time? | I suppose it depends on what the circumstances are. In cases like Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, there wasn't anything that could be done until we got our hands on the Rosetta Stone.
Basically, we have two options depending on how ancient it is and if there is text surviving from it.
If we have some sorts of texts from the language, they are compared to languages that are children of that ancient language. We can see residual words, phrases, sounds, and grammar from the children that can be compared to the parent language. We can then piece together different translatable portions so we can use context to determine other portions. It's certainly a very difficult task, and it's near impossible to make a full reconstruction without something like the Rosetta Stone in which a language still in modern use (sort of) is directly translating the unknown language.
The more challenging alternative is reconstructing an ancient language with no existing language data. In this case, the only thing that can be done is reconstruct a theoretical proto-language since there is nothing existing that can prove anything. It involves painstaking analysis of data on words, sounds, and grammar of languages born from that hypothetical language.
It becomes a game of "what words seem to look similar in most of these languages? how can we reconstruct a proto-form from the similarities in those similar words (fake example: wodar, wuter, woter= possibly woter?)? how can we explain places where not all languages share a similar pattern/word for something?"
Proto-language construction is seriously a headache, and requires a lifetime dedication to something that can't be proven and may never truly be complete.
Re-construction translation is also quite challenging, but fruitful and enriches our understanding of history in a big way. It's very similar to cryptology, since it's about decoding a system of coding (turning ideas/words in your head into words out loud/on paper) through puzzle-solving and looking at related codes to draw out similarities (which is why Navajo was such an uncrackable code during WWII...they couldn't draw on past codes' characteristics since it was built on nothing we were used to in codes OR in language grammar in real languages)
TL;DR: Very patiently, with luck and a very problem-solving oriented mind. Also, wall of text. Apologies. | [
"Reconstructions of the words and phenomes of ancient proto-languages such as Proto-Indo-European have been performed based on the observed analogues in present-day languages. Typically, these analyses are carried out manually using the \"comparative method\". First, words from different languages with a common ety... |
nuclear anti-aircraft weapons | In a time when guidance systems weren't terribly advanced, being able to aim in the general vicinity of a swarm of aircraft was a great advantage. And having a nuke go off over your country was preferable to letting those planes drop several nukes directly on your cities or airbases. | [
"The \"zone-defense\" anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) capability has vanished, and all that remains is a \"point-defense\" type of anti-air warfare armament. It would supposedly have been too costly to refit the Standard SM-1MR missiles, which had little ability to bring down sea-skimming missiles. Another reason is to... |
why are the russians troops that invaded crimea wearing masks and in unmarked uniforms | Plausible deniability--Russia can say they are "thugs", or "gangs" without taking direct responsibility. | [
"In the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, Russian special forces in unmarked uniforms began surrounding Ukrainian military bases on the Crimea before capturing them individually using a mixture of attrition and threats. Over the following weeks the Russian Armed Forces consolidated control of the peninsul... |
3d printing over void space | It depends on the printer. Some printers will switch to a different material called support material and print the "void" solid. Once the object is done printing it is soaked in a chemical solution that dissolves the support material leaving the void. Other printers like the one I have will use the original material but print that section in a zig zag pattern that is weakly connected to the object so it can be snapped off creating the void. Almost like the void is printed but perforated for easy removal. Other printers use current methods to achieve the void. Does this help? | [
"The theory is: If Rainbow's \"geometric\" algorithm is to be encoded and decoded by a computer, it would equally viable to store the compressed data on a conventional disk rather than printing it to paper or other non-digital medium. Printing something as dots on a page rather than bits on a disk will not change t... |
why is it illegal to download music without paying for it when i have access to the same music for free on multimedia websites, like youtube? | Because artists post music to YouTube themselves, and in turn get a cut of the ad revenue and the sales that those videos generate. | [
"Another issue is that because many people in the world illegally download music because they cannot afford to purchase legitimate copies, not every illegal download necessarily equates to a lost sale. This has some effect on music sales, but as Lawrence Lessig points out, there is wide asymmetry between the estima... |
if i die and i am eligible to donate organs, who would pay for the procedure? | Insurance pays for it through the intended recipient generally | [
"The Convention provides the general rule that living donors for organ transplants are only to be utilised if there is no availability of organs from a deceased person. Any removed parts of the body must be disposed of respectfully in accordance with the wishes of the individual. In addition, there is to be no fina... |
what causes the inside of toilet tanks to appear all poopy? | You sure you didn't get an upper decker? | [
"At the top of the toilet bowl is a rim with many angled drain holes that are fed from the tank, which fill, rinse, and induce swirling in the bowl when it is flushed. Some designs use a large hole in the front of the rim to allow faster filling of the bowl. There may also be a siphon jet hole about one inch (2.5 c... |
How extreme was the threat of the cold war going "hot" in 1983? | I did some digging and found out that it was actually because of the Chinese and Russian conflict along their borders. Those dude hated eachother, but here's why/how.
Mao is the one who started it all. You see, the thing is, Mao fucking loved Stalin. Idolized the dude. They used to have a very friendly relationship where China would trade their grain for the USSR'S weaponry. This went on until Gorbachev moved in and denounced Stalin. This caused Mao to stop all trade agreements and begin the cultural revolution. It wasnt the sole reason the revolution began, but it was a major factor. It was a big fuck you to the USSR. To go even further, China changed their definition of Communism just to further piss them off. This caused them to attack eachother often along borders and rivers. One of the conflicts got so bad, the USSR was hours away from nuking China's shit. They decided not to because America had a strong relationship with China and we could just supply China with nukes to retaliate. Sorry if this is a little messy. I haven't slept in a few days(working on thesis). Good night, hope this helps. | [
"The Cold War saw periods of both heightened tension and relative calm. International crises arose, such as the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (1955–1975), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) and NATO exercises in No... |
Is there a single pre-Early Modern Period weapon of war that can be considered to dwarf all others of its time in terms of its effectiveness? | I'd say the crossbow definitely deserves to be up there. Anyone could use one and it had enough punch to go through armor. Famously, the Church banned the use of crossbows against Christians in 1139, usually attributed to this reason. Unlike a bow, a man did not need any formal training. When it came to defense, it could be safely reloaded from behind walls and even had an advantage on the bow in that a crossbowman had to expose less of himself than a bowman- you can shoot a crossbow like a rifle and have to stand up all the way to shoot a bow.
While I don't think this really answers your question, it was a huge innovation. edit: especially important was the effectiveness of the crossbow. It was relatively cheap and minimal training; I could hand you one and you'd figure it out quickly. An untrained peasant with cheap equipment could now take down a man who had trained from the time he could hold a sword and was wearing a fortune in armor.
But the longbow of England, primarily Wales, was huge. It had a range of 300 yards or so. While the best crossbows could outshoot it, a longbowmen could fire 4-6 shots for every one a crossbow could fire. The bodkin tip could pierce plate (and if it did not, the kinetic force could knock people over). It was the dominant force in the English armies for much of the 100 years war, Agincourt being a prime example. Unlike the crossbow, it required a great amount of training from a very early age. It did, however, maintain the resource advantage in that bows are relatively cheap and plate armor was expensive. Hell, a longbow was more effective than firearms; it had better range and better rate of fire. The only disadvantage was the training required really. I think that one weapon could fit your question. When it came to ranged weapons of the time, it was by far and away the dominant force. | [
"Besides the Dulle Griet, a number of 15th-century European superguns are known to have been employed primarily in siege warfare, including the wrought-iron Pumhart von Steyr and Mons Meg as well as the cast-bronze Faule Mette, Faule Grete and Grose Bochse.\n",
"Besides the Pumhart von Steyr, a number of 15th-cen... |
Why didn't the Inca use their metallurgy capabilities to mass produce weapons instead of decorations, figurines and symbolic ornaments? | Andean people saw metal in a fundamentally different way from Europeans. Metal was a material of symbolic, religious importance. Using it for utilitarian purposes was wasteful. Those few tools that were made from metal were implements like tweezers and needles where ductility was more important than hardness. If a tool/weapon was designed to be a blunt implement like a hammer or mace, it was made from heavy rock like basalt. If a tool/weapon was designed to be a cutting implement it was made from obsidian or chert.
Bronze and copper actually have low marginal benefits compared to these materials. By that I mean, early bronze implements aren't *that* much better than stone. When you have a cultural value that treats metal as something sacred, why sacrifice the metal you have to make something that isn't that much better than what you're already using? | [
"The Aztecs did not initially adopt metal working, even though they had acquired metal objects from other peoples. However, as conquest gained them metal working regions, the technology started to spread. By the time of the Spanish conquest, a bronze-smelting technology seemed to be nascent.\n",
"The Inca made be... |
How significant was the UK's contribution to the allied victory in WWII compared to that of the USA and USSR? | A corollary question would be "how important was the Western Front/Strategic Air Command/Northern Lend-Lease routes to Germany's defeat?"
The primary contribution of the UK, in my opinion, was their actual landmass on the eastern side of the Atlantic that made those other things possible. (Not intending to minimize their contribution in terms of manpower, material, or morale). | [
"Although Britain achieved ultimate victory in the war, the economic costs were enormous. Six years of prolonged warfare and heavy losses of merchant shipping meant that Britain had lost two-thirds of her pre-war export trade by 1945. The loss of her export markets also caused a serious shortage of US dollars, whic... |
Historically, how unusual is it to have a 60+ year period in which no major world powers are at war with each other? | Peace in human history is relatively fleeting.
Before we can discuss periods of peace, we need to discuss what, exactly, a world power is. Because the ability to project force around the entire globe is relatively recent (say within the last 300 or so years), I'll stick to that period. I also don't know squat about say, Ancient China, so I'll just leave that out.
In the last 500 years, since the dawn of the modern age in Europe, there has never been a protracted period of peace longer than about 40 years. This is not to say that individual nation states have not enjoyed longer periods of peace, only to say that a major conflict has broken out among great powers at least that often, but usually much more often. To make things easy, I think a list is in order. Below, I'll recount only relatively large conflicts involving the European Great Powers, until we get to the 19th century, and I'll start including the United States, and then the 20th century, I'll start including China, Japan, and other powers.
The Italian War of 1521-1526 - France, England, Holy Roman Empire
The German Wars of Religion (ended 1555) - This was more akin to a giant civil war, but still.
The French Wars of Religion (ended 1589) - ditto.
The Dutch Revolt against Spain (1566-1648)
The attempted Spanish invasion of England/Spanish Armada (1588)
The Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) - France, Holy Roman Empire, Sweden
The War of Devolution (1667-1668) - France, England, Dutch Republic
Franco-Dutch War (1672-1678)
War of the League of Augsburg (1688-1697) - England, France, HRE
The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) - France, Britain, Austria
War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) - France, Britain, Prussia, Austria
Seven Year's War (1756-1763) - same combatants, different teams.
French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815)
**This is the largest gap**
The Crimean War (1853)
Wars of Italian Unification (1859-1871) - saw fighting between France and Austria
Austro-Prussian War (1866-1867)
Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)
Spanish-American War (1989)
Russo-Japanese War (1905)
The First World War (1914-1918)
The Second World War (1931-1945)
The Korean War (1949-1953) - saw fighting between China and the United States
The Vietnam War (1945-1975) - often considered a proxy war between the US and the USSR
The Soviet War in Afghanistan (1979-1989) - often considered a proxy war between the US and the USSR
Since the fall of the Soviet Union about 25 years ago, there haven't been any major conflicts between great powers, but many of the great powers have been in conflicts with smaller nations. The United States is chief among these Great Powers, having been at war in 1990-1991 (Iraq), 1992-1995 (Somalia), and I'll stop there to avoid hitting our 20 year rule, but suffice it to say, the US has not been at peace for most of the period since then.
EDIT: I should also note that in that largest gap between 1815 and 1853, Europe saw at least two major periods of major instability in 1830 and 1848. | [
"Apart from the aforementioned wars, there have been skirmishes between the two nations from time to time. Some have bordered on all-out war, while others were limited in scope. The countries were expected to fight each other in 1955 after warlike posturing on both sides, but full-scale war did not break out.\n",
... |
if we know that leptin suppresses hunger and triggers fat-burning, why hasn't a leptin pill/injection been developed to treat obesity? | Leptin is not used physiologically as an acute (i.e., short-term) sensor of energy. Instead, it evolved as a "famine sensor" - leptin is normally secreted by fat cells, and when all of the fat is used up, leptin is no longer produced. This signals only when there is no fat, i.e., during periods of extreme famine.
This is why giving leptin as a pill doesn't work - the body doesn't really care how much there is, as long as it's present. Adding more has no effect due to evolved "leptin resistance". In fact, the same thing (a lack of effect when giving excess leptin to the obese) happens in all mammals.
[This](_URL_0_) paper is a great introduction to the mechanisms of weight defence, but it is quite technical. Leptin is poorly understood in general media, with many positing it as the master regulator of weight maintenance. In reality, we don't really have a master regulator - we've never had to evolve a strong mechanism to stop us eating! | [
"It has been suggested that the main role of leptin is to act as a starvation signal when levels are low, to help maintain fat stores for survival during times of starvation, rather than a satiety signal to prevent overeating. Leptin levels signal when an animal has enough stored energy to spend it in pursuits besi... |
how do networks calculate accurate ratings if so few people have a neilson box? | Neilsen ratings are getting increasingly inaccurate. They're years behind the technology people are using now. They and others like them are slowly getting better at tracking ratings across media, like streaming, VOD, Cable, etc, but I'm surprised advertisers aren't pushing them harder to get their act together. | [
"As Figure 4 illustrates, the overall positioning of the boxes also influences the results of a box count. One approach in this respect is to scan from multiple orientations and use averaged or optimized data.\n",
"Box office numbers were reported at the time as a percentage compared to 'normal' business at each ... |
why and how is the brain able to "forget" tragic events and pain? | I'm not sure I'd call this an "ability". This is something that is usually *caused* rather than the brain, well, deciding to do it.
That said, there are quite a few different things that might be happening here. Your personal experience if pretty obvious trauma, during which the brain might not have *recorded* the memories in the first place. There is a delay between you experiencing something and it being encoded into long-term memory. Trauma can prevent that from happening.
Different kinds of physical trauma can cause physical damage, which may cause a person to forget things.
There is also *temporary* traumatic memory loss, where the brain will just refuse to *access* memories which *are* there. This is usually, as mentioned, temporary.
Finally, women "forgetting" the pain of childbirth is more a natural Human ability to focus on the positive. It's pretty common to have an inherently mixed experience, but if the positives outweigh the negatives, we tend to ignore the latter. | [
"RA can occur without any anatomical damage to the brain, lacking an observable neurobiological basis. Primarily referred to as psychogenic amnesia or psychogenic fugue, it often occurs due to a traumatic situation that individuals wish to consciously or unconsciously avoid through intrapsychic conflicts or unconsc... |
how come different parts of our body have a different tolerance to heat? | Difference in the amount of sensing nerves. Fingers are the most sensitive (if earth is a perfectly round marble, our finger can feel the cars moving just by touching it) | [
"The square root of the product of thermal conductivity, density, and specific heat capacity is called thermal effusivity, and tells how much heat energy the body absorbs or releases in a certain amount of time per unit area when its surface is at a certain temperature. Since the heat taken in by the cooler body mu... |
Meet your new moderators! | It's been said before but it bears repeating. Thanks to all the moderators for your tireless hard work in keeping this the best of all the subreddits. That you can do so despite this place now having close to half a million subscribers is a testament to the quality of the moderation. | [
"A moderator is an official of an incorporated town who presides over the town meeting, and in some cases, other municipal meetings. In the United States, the area of the country best known for the town meeting form of government is New England. The office of moderator exists in at least Connecticut (Mandell c. 200... |
Can rainfall amplify sky noise? (Jet noise more specifically) | It's mainly acoustic reflections off the clouds (which is mainly due to particles and temperature gradients within the cloud). You should hear the same on a cloudy (but dry) day as on a rainy day with comparable cloud cover. | [
"Sound movement through the atmosphere is affected by wind shear, which can bend the wave front, causing sounds to be heard where they normally would not, or vice versa. Strong vertical wind shear within the troposphere also inhibits tropical cyclone development, but helps to organize individual thunderstorms into ... |
Why did Moctezuma allow Tlaxcallan warriors into Tenochtitlan alongside Cortes? | Could you clarify your question a little further? I'm assuming you are referring to the initial arrival of cortez and his allies and not to conquest of the city (since refusal of entry wouldn't matter too much during a seige). | [
"In one of his responses to Cortés, Moctezuma blamed the commanders of the local Aztec garrison for the resistance in Cholula, and recognizing that his long-standing attempts to dissuade Cortés from coming to Tenochtitlan with gifts of gold and silver had failed, Moctezuma finally invited the conquistadors to visit... |
Where did our solar system's cosmic dust come from? | > Planets are made from asteroids smashing together. Asteroids are made from dust smashing together.
A little simplistic, since the planets formed at about the same time as the asteroids, and the gas giants are mostly made of gas and not the silicates and metals that asteroids are.
> Where did the dust come from?
The Solar System formed out of a large, rotating cloud of gas and dust. The heavy (meaning heavier than helium) elements are from supernovae and planetary nebulae which enriched the interstellar medium. Throw some heavy elements into a gas cloud and they will start to agglomerate into dust grains. The gas cloud will start to collapse and form a dusty disk, and the dust grains will start to stick together and form planets. | [
"Cosmic dust is widely present in space, where gas and dust clouds are the primary precursors for planetary systems. The zodiacal light, as seen in a dark night sky, is produced by sunlight reflected from particles of dust in orbit around the Sun. The tails of comets are produced by emissions of dust and ionized ga... |
why have recent us presidential elections typically come down to swing states of ohio, pennsylvania, florida? | Let's say you're running for class president, and you have a class of 100 people, that are sorted into 6 big groups of friends who all vote together:
- Your best friend Carl and his 19 friends
- Your other friend Nate and his 5 friends
- Your enemy Tom and his 19 friends
- His girlfriend Alice and her 5 friends,
- These other kids who you know, but aren't really close with either way, Florence and her 30 friends, Oliver and his 20 friends
You probably don't need to spend a lot of time going after Carl and Nate. They're your best friends, and they're going to vote for your pretty much no matter what, unless you really go crazy. So you'll stop by and say hi, but you're not going to spend a lot of time lobbying for their votes.
There's not really any point in going after Tom and Alice, either. Tom hates you, his friends all hate you, her friends all hate you, and no amount of time spent talking to them is going to convince them to vote for you over your opponent.
Florence and Oliver aren't really friends with either of you, they don't hate you either. They can be swayed either way, depending on which ideas they like better. So you would spend more time talking to Florence and Oliver than anyone else, since the time you spend talking to them can actually influence the election.
To translate to the real world, you're a Democrat and Carl is California, Nate is New Jersey, Tom is Texas, Alice is Alabama, Florence is Florida, and Oliver is Ohio.
Why would Hillary spend time in Alabama? She's not going to win it. Why would she spend a ton of time in California? Most likely, they are going to vote Democrat. So she spends a lot of time in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania since polling shows they could swing either way, and if her case appeals to those votes she can take the election. | [
"While the general trend in the South has shown an increasing dominance of the Republican party, politics in the 21st century are just as contentious and competitive as any time in the region's history. States such as Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina have become swing states; all three of which voted for Barac... |
tipping out ( delivery driver ) | An amount or percentage of a server's tips that the server shares, either voluntarily or as mandated in a tip sharing or tip pooling agreement, with other employees such as bus boys, bartenders, back waiters and hostesses whose job duties indirectly assist the server. | [
"An express company is a business developed in the United States which provides for the speedy transmission of parcels or merchandise of any kind and their safe delivery in good condition. “Collect on delivery” service is also featured, the express company making the collecting and forwarding “returns” to the shipp... |
How did european explorers in the age of discovery handle new languages? | There's always room for discussion, but perhaps the section [Cross-cultural communication and lingua francas](_URL_0_) from our FAQ will answer your inquiry. | [
"Throughout the early age of exploration, it became increasingly clear that the residents of the Iberian Peninsula were experts at navigation, sailing, and expansion. From Henry the Navigator's first adventures down the African coast to Columbus's fabled expedition resulting in the discovery of the new world, the f... |
when you deposit to a bank, does the bank just store the money | The way modern banking works is heavily reliant on what we call 'fractional reserve banking'. When you deposit money in the bank, a portion of that money (say, 10%) is set aside and actually kept in the bank. The other 90% of the money is made available for loans from the bank.
That is, effectively, what a bank's main business is. In return for putting your money in the bank, you get some money as interest, and the bank uses your money to give out loans, which will in turn be repaid to the bank with more interest. | [
"BULLET::::1. Banks go through their daily transactions. Of the total money deposited at banks, significant and predictable proportions often remain deposited, and may be referred to as \"core deposits.\" Banks use the bulk of \"non-moving\" money (their stable or \"core\" deposit base) by loaning it out. Banks hav... |
why does chipotle cause diarrhea? | It's not anything specific to Chipotle. I think you'll find that most fast food chains have this reputation to at least some degree.
It's because the food is made cheaply with a lot of fat, starch, sugar, and salt, and not a whole lot else. Anyone who eats too much of that kind of food in one sitting is going to make themselves sick, and some people tolerate it better than others. And then you add to that the fact that most people will order a caffeinated soft drink, which also adds to that effect because caffeine, as a stimulant, can cause gastrointestinal discomfort as a side effect. And then all of that gets multiplied even further if you like to go out for fast food after an evening of drinking.
| [
"In October 2015, at least 22 people were reported to have gotten sick after eating at several different Chipotle locations in the states of Washington and Oregon. At that time, an epidemiologist for the Washington Health Department said the culprit appeared to be a Shiga toxin-producing \"Escherichia coli\" bacter... |
What is the difference between quantum uncertainty and ordinary uncertainty? | The short answer is that the difference is one between true, intrinsic uncertainty in the quantum case, and a simple lack of information in the classical case. A concise way of stating the distinction is to say that it is one of "quantum uncertainty" vs. "classical ignorance."
To look at this idea more closely, the key difference between quantum mechanics and classical physics in terms of uncertainty is that only quantum mechanics allows for the possibility of [interference](_URL_3_) between physical states. To use your electron-diffraction experiment, realize that this result is *not* predicted by classical physics. In a classical experiment the path of the electron would have been fully deterministic. You could have treated the electron as a ball and the grating as a pinball machine and then you could have exactly predicted the electron's trajectory. The only reason there would have been a spread in its final distribution of the electron's position would have been due to experimental limitations, which might be called "classical ignorance". This result is qualitatively different from the quantum mechanical picture, where you simply can no longer trace such a sharply defined zig-zag path for the electron. Instead, now the most you can say about the electron's effective movement is that the final position will be a properly weighted sum of the different paths the electron can take and [the interference pattern these would create](_URL_1_).
So to reiterate, it is interference that is what sets true "quantum uncertainty" apart from what can be called "classical ignorance." In the quantum case, the wavelike nature of *all* particles means that the interaction between particles and even the time evolution of individual particles will show interference effects. Importantly, these interference effects are possible when there is a well-maintained phase relationship in the system. The reason you need to keep the phase stable is [shown in this cartoon](_URL_2_). If the phase varies wildly, then the phase information will be effectively washed out and the wave-like interference can be ignored. Such a situation can occur if you allow your system to interact with some large external "environment," where this process of washing out the phase is called [decoherence](_URL_0_). In the limit of complete decoherence you lose the possibility to have any interference, and as you may expect you recover the classical limit. | [
"In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle (also known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle) is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle, known as complementary variables or canonically conjugate... |
Why is English spoken in the United States instead of German? | While German ancestry is still the largest single ethnic heritage group it isnt necessarily the most cohesive one. Much of it is either centuries old pre unification or heavily scrubbed in no small part thanks to the World Wars.
While despite the large numbers of migrants, the fact that large numbers both pre and post independence were from the British Isles, and more importantly almost all the upper classes were English speaking meant it was never going to change. When business, govt, public announcements, and most media are in English it keeps it going.
Thus you would need sufficient concentration of speakers who would not learn or didnt know English to make another language viable even locally, of course urban neighborhoods worked for that, and still exist today with the various Chinatowns, or say Williamsburg in Brooklyn with its Hasdic Jewish community.
While there were places like this for German Americans, especially in the Midwest, and even survives in its own way with the Pennsylvania Dutch spoken by the Amish, the World Wars did much to force assimilation on many German Americans. Both outright efforts to minimize German culture, and simple social pressure took over. As an example of the effect this had, you even saw whole towns renamed to erase German influences, Berlin Michigan became Marne Michigan. | [
"An urban legend, sometimes called the Muhlenberg legend after Frederick Muhlenberg, states that English only narrowly defeated German as the U.S. official language. In reality, the proposal involved a requirement that government documents be translated into German. The United States has no statutory official langu... |
why is field hockey a woman's sport in the us but a men's sport in the rest of the world? | There is a law in the USA referred to as ["Title IX"](_URL_0_) that says educational opportunities cannot discriminate based on gender.
That includes sports sponsored by schools creating a situation where "boys" sports can't be funded more heavily than "girls" sports.
So usually you get mens and womens teams for each sport (soccer, basketball, softball/baseball, etc) but sometimes there needs to be different sports. There probably isn't enough interest to field a women's football team but if you can get enough girls to join the field hockey team then you can have a balance.
Maybe without Title IX Field Hockey, regardless of gender, would have never taken hold in the USA like Cricket but with Title IX it has. Title IX is one explanation for why the USA is so dominant in Women's Soccer because there was a require to develop female athletics that isn't present in many other nations including ones where Soccer is by far the dominant sport. | [
"Field hockey is not a major sport at college level in the United States, so the men's team does not have as much experience as most other international teams that have professional players. The sport is largely thought of as a women’s game in the United States; field hockey has historically been used as a “Title I... |
game theory (relating to mathematics and john nash. not video game creation and analysis) | Game theory is a mathematical analysis of how logical players should behave in a game to maximise their expected reward bearing in mind that everyone else is trying to maximise their expected reward.
The applications in the real world can be "Where should I put my shop?" because you want to get the most customers but everyone else is also trying to get the most they can.
There is also the famous Prisoner's dilemma "Should I rat out my partner before he tells on me?"
Sometimes we get situations called "Nash Equilbriums" where no player can improve their lot by changing decision if no one else changes. In the prisoner's dilemma it's not good that both you and your friend will go to jail but you certainly don't want him to run off with the stolen money to the bahamas while you rot so you both stick with telling the police on the other.
Here is a scene from the film where John Nash thinks of game theory while at a bar trying to get girls. It's debateable however whether what is described is an equilibrium as the last person can get the blonde.
_URL_0_ | [
"Game theory is \"the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers.\" Game theory is mainly used in economics, political science, and psychology, as well as logic, computer science, biology and poker. Originally, it mainly addressed zero-sum games, in which o... |
Did NASA sterilize the mars rovers to prevent relocating bacterial life to mars? | I found this article that talks about.
_URL_0_
My first thought was that they couldn’t survive place but some can. The article says that NASA has process to clean rovers to not contaminate other celestial bodies. | [
"Towards the end of July 2005, it was reported by the \"Sunday Times\" that the rovers may have carried the bacteria \"Bacillus safensis\" to Mars. According to one NASA microbiologist, this bacteria could survive both the trip and conditions on Mars. A book containing this claim, \"Out of Eden\" by Alan Burdick, i... |
Do humans emit X-rays from blackbody radiation? | I can't do the math right now, but you could calculate the energy emitted per second at your chosen frequency and then divide by the energy of a photon of that frequency; that should give an estimate of the rate at which photons are emitted.
Edit: I did the math. Taking the range of frequencies to be from 10^18 Hz to 1.1\*10^18 Hz, I get 3\*10^(-67199) photons per square meter per second. To contrast, the age of the universe is a measly 10^17 seconds. I can say with absolute confidence that no living organism has ever emitted or will ever emit an x-ray photon. | [
"There are a number of types of astrophysical objects which emit X-rays, from galaxy clusters, through black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) to galactic objects such as supernova remnants, stars, and binary stars containing a white dwarf (cataclysmic variable stars and super soft X-ray sources), neutron star ... |
Is there a difference in warming up my car on a cold day in Park or in Drive? | It depends on how the pump in your (presumably) automatic transmission works. Some are connected to the input shaft and are pumping if the engine is running. Others are connected to the output shaft, and pump only if the car is moving. Pumping the fluid will warm it up and move new fluid to all parts of your transmission.
Most new cars recommend no warm-up period; mostly for emissions reasons, but they are fully capable of moderate operation when cold. Cars used to be much more problematic during cold starts because of looser tolerances, poor thermal expansion properties, and fuel not staying in suspension into the cylinders. | [
"The heating of the passenger cab is by a conventional \"wet\" automotive system. Heat is derived from the traction battery via a resistance element. Use of the heater significantly reduces range. The traction motor cooling system runs at much lower temperatures than in a conventional car and is therefore separate ... |
How many cannonballs could a 16th (17th and 18th) century ship take before it sank? | Note: Parts of my reply here come from an earlier reply of mine [here](_URL_1_).
Ships were actually rarely sunk during this era. They floated on their timber and it often took storms breaking them apart for them to sink. They could catch fire and burn to the waterline, but that would still often not sink them.
They would be damaged, the crew would be wounded, maimed or killed, they would be demasted or derigged and be dead in the water, but they would rarely sink.
Note for example how *USS Merrimac* burned to the waterline and the hull was still usable to construct the ironclad *CSS Virginia*.
Ship of the line (and modern frigates akin to the *USS Constitution*) were heavily built during this era - up to a meter of hard oak wood was not uncommon, so the ships had quite a bit of "armour" and could resist fire quite well. The *USS Constitution* gained the nickname "Old Ironsides" in the battle with the *HMS Guerriere*, when the British 18pdrs proved incapable of penetrating the hull of the more modern and heavily built US frigate.
During the latter half of the 18th centry, naval combat turned pretty indecisive. Fleets lined up and blasted each other, causing considerable casualties and damaging each other a lot, but seldom actually disabling or destroying their opponent.
For example, the battle of [Chesapeake, 1781](_URL_2_), 43 ships with a total of 1 952 guns met in a 2 hour battle, resulting in damage, but no ships captured or sunk. The British scuttled the *HMS Terrible* 6 days later due to damage, but otherwise both fleet sailed on. It is the same story with the [Battle of Hogland, 1788](_URL_0_) where Sweden and Russia squared off with a total of 51 ships and 2 416 guns, resulting in a 6 hour battle where both sides captured (not sunk, captured) a Ship of the Line each.
As you can see, while you could kill the crew and damage ships, destroying them completely was hard during this era.
To destroy a ship, the most reliable tactic was to destroy its rigging (by demasting or destroying the rigging), leaving it dead in the water and then turn to rake the ship. This meant that you shot an entire broadside at the front, or even more preferably, the rear of the enemy ship. While the sides of the ship was made of thick oak, the rear were often made up of gilded scuptures and large windows and the timber was far less thick. You could also fire a cannonball through the entire length of the ship, killing, maiming and wounding men, destroying cannon and damaging pumps, rudders, the lower end of the masts etc. When penetrating a side, your cannonball travelled a far shorter distance and could damage far less.
That is why ships of the era sailed in a line (and why ships large enough to be able to do battle under such conditions were called Ship of the Line), to protect each others' front and rear.
This is also why Nelson was such a brilliant commander - instead of sailing in the customary line, he bet that the Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar was not up to notch on its gunnewry due to being in port for a long time and that even if they were, his ships could take the damage - so he sailed in a 90 degree angle towards the Franco-Spanish fleet, letting the first ships (including *HMS Victory*) in his own column take all the enemy fire and then broke the enemy line and had his ships rake the enemy ships, completely destroying several vessels and shattering the Franco-Spanish fleet's formation, leaving them at the mercy of the Royal Navy. | [
"The first ships to actually mount heavy cannon capable of sinking ships were galleys, with large wrought-iron pieces mounted directly on the timbers in the bow. The first example is known from a woodcut of a Venetian galley from 1486. Heavy artillery on galleys was mounted in the bow which fit conveniently with th... |
why does it seem that there are more news about police brutality/malpractice than actual criminal news in us? | Easy it's a one word answer. That word is money. The media can sell more commercials now a days with police brutality than just regular criminal brutality. | [
"With crime accounting for up to 25 per cent of news coverage, the quality and angle of the coverage becomes an issue. The media displays violent crime disproportionately, whilst neglecting minor crimes. The reality is violent crime has been declining in the past 10 years The profile of offenders in the media is di... |
Does Earth's gravitational field look the same as Earth's magnetic field? | No, Earth's gravitational field is basically a [monopole](_URL_1_), pointing inwards everywhere, whereas the magnetic field is largely a [dipole](_URL_0_), sort of the shape of the surface of an apple running from pole to pole. | [
"As a first-order approximation, Earth's magnetic field can be modeled as a simple dipole (like a bar magnet), tilted about 10° with respect to Earth's rotation axis (which defines the Geographic North and Geographic South Poles) and centered at Earth's center. The North and South Geomagnetic Poles are the antipoda... |
why are buildings in pripyat in ruins? | No, because looting. You don't die instantly from being in an area of high radiation, like parts of the Chernobyl region. We think of that as a catastrophe, but people were back at work at the plant *days* later. Insane, right? Well, no, the plant was operational for years (like, 20 years) after. Chernobyl had a full-time staff and was producing power for Ukrainians until about a year ago.
The people whose homes got looted early on were in the "Exclusion Zone," a range around the plant that actually was dangerous (and still is). They left, but there were actually very few people (relatively speaking, of course) hurt by the '86 meltdown. The creepiness of the photos you see of Chernobyl is not unique to Chernobyl, it's just the fact that places that are abandoned are creepy as shit. | [
"It has been deserted since its wells went dry in the 19th century. Situated between hills, it is still home to a ruined palace, mosque and city wall. These ruins were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on July 21, 2005, in the cultural category.\n",
"Experts were called in from the National Museum... |
why is adding a dark theme to an app/os so hard and doesn't take just a few color changes? | from my experience, it's the chaotic way in which designers end up serving specifications. Might be more true in web but designers don't often enough get enough time or info to plan out a theme for their project in such ways that inversions of colors can just happen on the fly and you gets palettes with too many colors that get used inconsistently in the designs that you then have to flip somehow.
things aren't defined, for instance, as background color, title color, text color, link color from the start but a humble of colors that are sometimes backgrounds sometimes links sometimes 1 shade away from every other view/page in the project making the scope of such a theme change pointlessly more difficult
based on the average client's willingness to incorporate principles of accessibility design I'd be surprised if things got better | [
"Dark mode changes the desktop to a darkened color scheme, putting the focus on user content while interface elements and controls recede into the background. Built-in apps like Mail, Messages, Maps, Calendar and Photos include Dark mode designs. App developers can implement Dark mode in their apps via a public API... |
why do we look for faces in everything? | its because we are wired to recognize faces.. its primarily how we know who everyone else is.
Since we are primed to learn and see faces we are good at picking them out of random happenstance.
The trait is called [Pareidolia](_URL_0_)
As Carl put it
> Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human beings are "hard-wired" from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces. The evolutionary advantages of being able to identify friend from foe with split-second accuracy are numerous; prehistoric (and even modern) men and women who accidentally identify an enemy as a friend could face deadly consequences for this mistake. This is only one among many evolutionary pressures responsible for the development of the facial recognition capability of modern humans | [
"Recognizing and perceiving faces are vital abilities needed to coexist in society. Faces can tell things such as identity, mood, age, sex, race, and the direction that someone is looking. Studies based on neuropsychology, behavior, electrophysiology, and neuro-imaging have supported the notion of a specialized mec... |
Before readily available contraceptives, how did the sexual relationship between married couples work? | The most common form of natural conception was, somewhat unsurprisingly, simply not having sex at all. There's some evidence for withdrawal being used, but by and large 'stopping' (as demographic historians call it) was the main driver of fertility limitation. The period I'm referring to is Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but I understand it largely holds true across cultures and time periods.
In an enjoyable sidebar, the Catholic Church was keen to promote the rhythm method in the same period. Unfortunately, they got their maths all wrong, and their 'safe' times of the month were in fact the times of peak fertility. As a result, the rhythm method came to be known as 'Vatican roulette' | [
"Prior to the \"Marriage Act 1753\" (commonly known as the Hardwicke Act), British couples could live together and have sex after their betrothal or \"the spousals\". Theologian Adrian Thatcher claims that, before the Act was introduced, in the United Kingdom the betrothal was a formal, preliminary stage of marriag... |
Why do prunes have more sorbitol than plums? | Disclaimer: I'm a biochemist with no experience with plants, so this answer may be missing a lot of key elements. But this question got me interested, so I spent half an hour reading papers to try to figure it out.
My favorite explanation is that it looks like sorbitol is increased in fruit trees in response to drought conditions."In Rosaceae fruit trees, including apples, cherries, and peaches, sorbitol is the soluble carbohydrate primarily accumulated in response to drought stress to decrease osmotic potential and maintain turgor pressure." There's a known induction mechanism for S6PDH, the enzyme that is the bottleneck in sorbitol production, under water stress. Some trees also upregulate sorbitol transport and downregulate the sorbitol degredation pathway. So when you dry the plum to make the prune, this pathway kicks on for a while and produces a bunch of S6PDH and it makes a lot of sorbitol as the fruit dries out. The (review) paper I got most of this from is here: [_URL_1_](_URL_0_) Behind a paywall unfortunately.
However, there are some caveats to what I just said.
First, these studies are in live whole trees, and this pathway works in leaves, roots and the body of the tree, but hasn't been tested in fruit. Are there cells in the fruit that are actively upregulating and downregulating genes even after it's picked? I dunno. It's very possible that all the carbon left in central metabolism empties into sorbitol as the cells are dying or that there's some other non-genetic explanation.
Second, these studies are for apples and peaches. Plums are closely related to apples so it \*probably\* still applies. | [
"Prunes are 64% carbohydrates including dietary fiber, 2% protein, a rich source of vitamin K, and a moderate source of B vitamins and dietary minerals. The sorbitol content of dietary fiber likely provides the laxative effect associated with consuming prunes. Contrary to the name, boiled plums or prunes are not us... |
how do people get the smooth motion moving a camera in this video? | If you are wondering about how they get the camera to move smoothly over a period of minutes or hours, they are using a motorized camera slider, which is a track with a small motor that can move the camera along it and also tilt the camera at any speed you choose, sometimes moving at millimeters per minute. | [
"Camera movements can also be motion captured so that a virtual camera in the scene will pan, tilt or dolly around the stage driven by a camera operator while the actor is performing. At the same time, the motion capture system can capture the camera and props as well as the actor's performance. This allows the com... |
what is an "outgoing introvert" and how does it differ from a regular introvert? | Basically, being an introvert describes how your energy level and ability to recharge changes when experiencing social interactions. Introverts are drained by social interaction and need alone time to recharge.
But this is different than being shy. Shyness is how you confront the social interaction. Outgoing or shy has nothing to do with your energy levels.
You can be outgoing but still get drained by the interaction.
I am an introvert. My favorite activity on a Saturday night is to stay home and do something familiar...like read, scan the internet, watch a movie....alone. But, I am not shy. If an opportunity at work comes up that requires a speech or interacting with customers, everyone's head turns to me because they all know I will nail it! But afterwards, I hide in a hole for 36 hours to recharge. I am outgoing and I am definitely an introvert. | [
"An extravert's flow is directed outward toward people and objects, an introvert's is directed inward toward concepts and ideas. Contrasting characteristics between extraverts and introverts include the following:\n",
"An extravert's flow is directed outward toward people and objects, whereas the introvert's is d... |
Why is yellow ink red? | > I remember looking at a white wall through a vial of yellow food-coloring liquid, and seeing it as red. That’s because the transmission spectrum goes from very low at the short-wavelength (blue) end of the spectrum to nearly 1 at the long-wavelength (red) end of the spectrum. As one piles on more layers of the same fluid, the transmission spectrum multiplies by itself wavelength-by-wavelength (an action known as Beer’s law, which by coincidence also happens when you look through beer). Therefore, at the wavelength where one ply of the liquid transmits half the incident energy, two ply of the liquid transmits only 1/4 of the energy. On the other hand, at wavelengths where one ply transmits all the energy, two ply will transmit all the energy as well. For a transmission coefficient that increases monotonically in wavelength (such as most yellows), the transmitted-light spectrum becomes biased toward longer wavelengths (i.e., is redder) when the layer is thicker.
_URL_0_
(Red the article for a Feynman anecdote) | [
"Diffusion affects the color of objects in a substantial manner because it determines the average path of light in the material, and hence to which extent the various wavelengths are absorbed. Red ink looks black when it stays in its bottle. Its vivid color is only perceived when it is placed on a scattering materi... |
Would we be better off with another numeral system, such as the octal? | Which number system we use is largely arbitrary. Most base systems are a balance between numbers that are needlessly long, (10,000 is 111110100010011100010000 in binary - that's 25 digits), or needlessly complicated, (a system with two hundred different digits would be ridiculously hard to keep track of). Different number systems have been used by different cultures over different time periods. A base 10 system is a natural choice due to fact that we have ten fingers. Children often learn to count using a unary number system by indicating numbers with their fingers. A base ten system is one of the more commonly found number systems around the world. But there are exceptions.
The Sumerians, and later the Babylonians, famously used what is called a base 60 system, although this can be misleading. Babylonian numbers used a sub-base of ten to simplify notation, probably due to the previously mentioned difficulty of keeping track of that many digits. It is speculated that this is based on a common finger counting method of that time period, which is described in detail [here](_URL_0_).
Other common cultural number systems are based on 5, 12, or 20, each of which have some relation two a method of simple finger counting.
While number systems are largely arbitrary, there are some with specific advantages. Systems like base 12 or base 60 have more factors, and are easier for fractions, while octal and hexadecimal have specific advantages within the world of computing, often because of their relation to binary and the ease with which they can be converted.
The main issue with the widespread adoption of a different base number system is the way in which the decimal system is ingrained into our minds at a young age. Even people who are fluent in another number system will often prefer to default to base ten.
**Edit:** Grammar and formatting | [
"Duodecimal numeric systems have some practical advantages over decimal. It is much easier to divide the base digit twelve (which is a highly composite number) by many important divisors in market and trade settings, such as the numbers 2, 3, 4 and 6.\n",
"Octal and hex are convenient ways to represent binary num... |
What are some specifics on aviation during World War Two? (Detailed questions inside) | If you are going to discuss attacking rail lines, you will want to reference *Engines of War* by Christian Wolmar. In it, he details the resilience of the German rail network in WWII. Most attacks on rail lines resulted in at most a temporary interruption in rail traffic, generally lasting less than 24 hours. As you know from the Strategic Bombing Surveys, the ability to hit anything smaller than a city was quite rare. The only substantial damage to the German rail network's ability to function came late in the war with the "tallboy" bombs that could destroy railroad viaducts. Other than those attacks, hitting a rail line could be repaired with dirt, rocks, railroad ties, rails, and untrained labor. Wolmar cites British analysis of the German rail network, which points to the only weakness in the German system being a paucity of triangular junctions.
As for the operational details of the planes involved, you would likely want to reference Jane's. I believe it would have the numbers for range with a bomb load that you are looking for. Alternatively, you could find some of the longer missions undertaken and find the bomb loads for those missions, then do some map work to see if those same missions could have hit the targets you're examining. Planes always operated with a certain amount of reserve fuel, though. There was too much risk to operate at the extreme theoretical maximum range--with the notable exception of the Doolittle Raid.
You may also want to hit up Martin Van Creveld's *Age of Airpower*. He has a brief look at using bombers to stop the Holocaust. He goes into more depth on strategic bombing overall, and his bibliography may be of some use to you. | [
"Military aviation came into its own during the Second World War. The increased performance, range, and payload of contemporary aircraft meant that air power could move beyond the novelty applications of World War I, becoming a central striking force for all the combatant nations.\n",
"Few aspects of the history ... |
explain what’s happening here causing the bread to effectively vacuum seal itself | Expired? Mouldy and decomposing? | [
"In some ways, leavened bread is a foam, as the yeast causes the bread to rise by producing tiny bubbles of gas in the dough. The dough has traditionally been understood as a closed-cell foam, in which the pores do not connect with each other. Cutting the dough releases the gas in the bubbles that are cut, but the ... |
why can't you give blood if you've received blood? | Actually no, in your case it's about [mad cow disease.](_URL_0_) | [
"There are several reasons why individuals can be deferred from donating blood, including intravenous drug use, living in the UK for certain periods of time, coming from an HIV-endemic country, as well HIV high risk activity.\n",
"Red blood cells may be given as part of a blood transfusion. Blood may be donated f... |
How serious a threat was heresy to the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages? | A reply to /u/FineFuse
Rather than directly answer this very complex question, I would like to challenge the scoping of your question as follows.
The Catholic Church in the middle ages, which by the way spans a huuuuuuuuuuuge timeline and covers a huuuuuuuuuuge area, was not a monolithic, opaque being. The theoretical subservience to the Pope in Rome was in reality a highly fragmented political landscape. Positions of clergy, bishoprics, control of monasteries, cathedrals, churches, and perhaps most importantly revenue, were contested by regional powers and the cardinals and the Pope himself. At that time, there was no separation of church and state, so in many instances, the archbishops *were* the rulers. Further, many clergy positions were controlled by local rulers, as they made perfect vehicles for entitlement of their younger sons and daughters and bastard children.
So when you ask whether heresy was a serious threat to the Catholic Church, then the answers is yes, any deviation of orthodoxy was a serious threat to some aspects of the Catholic Church, especially the local power structures.
More broadly speaking, some heretical movements such as the Cathars were able to grow into strong regional secession movements, both against the church and against local rule -- remember, there was no separation of church and state. Thus, they were a grave threat to the Catholic Church in the regions that they fomented rebellion, and if they were to spread then it will have been a wider threat. That's why the Albigensian Crusade was called to stop this movement. Catharism spread across trading routes of the northwestern Mediterranean and was naturally seen as a grave threat to Rome itself. | [
"In the High Middle Ages the Church became increasingly concerned with the perceived threat posed to its existence by resurgent heresy, in particular that attributed to a purported sect known as the Cathars. Catharism had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and eastern Byzantine Anatolia and the Bogomils... |
Did ancient civilizations have banks? When did ideas like loans with interest come about? | Rome absolutely had bankers (argentarii), who follow our concept of modern banking in the broad sense. At least at first these bankers were often located in temples (where coins were minted) but not exclusively. They'd usually be in a fairly informal setting though. They'd have a place to store your money (often at a temple) but not an office building like we'd associate with a bank. They might have a table in a forum. (I say a forum rather than the forum because I don't want to suggest banks only existed in the city of Rome, where people associate *the* forum with.)
Argentarii took deposits and sometimes paid out interest on those deposits. Interest rates on savings could be highly competitive to attract customers. Bankers would issue drafts for a sum of money a client had on deposit with them (a check). And, perhaps most importantly, they would make loans and charge interest. Although it's important to say this didn't originate with Rome. The Greeks did it before Rome. And I don't know where the very first origin of it was.
Interest rates on loans were enough of a presence in regular life that they are casually commented about in Roman source. See:
> Cicero (Att., 4, 15, 7) commented that “interest [rates] went up on the Ides of July from 1/3 to 1/2 percent [per month].” There was “a 60 per cent drop in interest-rates after Augustus brought back treasure from Egypt” (Duncan-Jones 1982, 21).”
Source: The Roman Market Economy, Peter Temin Ch 8. P. 170.
These financial structures could be quite sophisticated. For instance, loans were assignable. So, if I loaned you 10 denarii and I died you would owe whoever inherited my estate that 10 denarii. But that also means I might be able to sell your loan and you'd owe the person I sold your loan to 10 denarii. The Roman Market Economy p 171.
It was also common for those setting up new ventures to use borrowed money. So, if you wanted to setup a vineyard you could get a loan with interest on it. Similarly, it was useful for merchants who needed funds to get whatever they sold before recouping a profit (hopefully). So, there were examples of using loans for investment purposes similar but not exactly the same to what you are talking about.
There were even calls to set up a government run and controlled bank although those were not followed up on.
For much of the time period the senatorial class was supposed to stay out of commerce. And some of the wealthy weren't barred from it but would prefer not to be identified with it (bankers are rarely popular). So, it would not be uncommon to provide funds for loans on interest but use an intermediary. Some men would use a freed slave (or an actual slave) for this purpose. So that freemen did begin to be associated with the industry. There were also successful and wealthy freemen in the industry of their own accord.
Ancient Greece had banks before Rome. Some spots were famous for them such as Delos. And there are examples of people taking out loans from the Temple of Apollo by using their house as security (i.e. a mortgage). But I know less about their general setup.
Sources: Rome's Economic Revolution, Phillip Kay and The Roman Market Economy, Peter Temin
| [
"The history of banking began with the first prototype banks which were the merchants of the world, who made grain loans to farmers and traders who carried goods between cities. This was around 2000 BC in Assyria, India and Sumeria. Later, in ancient Greece and during the Roman Empire, lenders based in temples made... |
Were there Renaissance English writers able to read works written in Old English? | Shakespeare's commonly-recognized sources include no Old English works (though they do include Chaucer). His sources for English history, like Holinshed's Chronicles, were roughly contemporaneous (and are recognizably the same language we speak today, once you get used to the non-standard spelling.)
The noted sources for the [Chronicles](_URL_0_) (see bottom) are largely in Latin, French, Greek, or roughly contemporary English, but a handful of Anglo-Saxon texts are mentioned, so it seems that someone on the Hollinshed team, or an antiquarian they had access to, could read it. | [
"The earliest \"scholarship\" on Old English literature was done by a scribe from Worcester known only as The Tremulous Hand - a sobriquet earned for a hand tremor causing characteristically messy handwriting - who flourished in the late 12th to early 13th century. The Tremulous Hand is known for many Latin glosses... |
why does any injury hurt more the next day | Your body is repairing itself. It may be swelling due to inflammation as well.
Also the endorphins that your body released at the time of injury are now gone, so no more natural pain killers.
| [
"That injury did not have him cancel any shows, as saying \"[the doctor] told me it's going to hurt – though nothing could hurt worse than Saturday, I don't think – and they can give me something to deaden the pain when I get out there. I also have to have a doctor standing by should something give, but I'm going t... |
why should mushrooms be brushed off rather than washed, before cooking? can you really taste the difference? | People say not to wash mushrooms as they may take on water and lose flavour. However mushrooms are mostly water and washing them shouldn't be a problem anyway. Brushing off rather than washing is a myth. | [
"\"Armillaria mellea\" mushroom are considered good edibles, although some individuals have reported \"allergic\" reactions that result in stomach upsets. Some authors suggest not collecting mushrooms from the wood of various trees, including hemlock, buckeye, eucalyptus, and locust. The mushrooms have a taste that... |
stocks that don't pay dividends | There are two types of earnings you can have by holding stocks: capital gains and dividends.
Capital gains are when you buy the stock at one price and sometime in the future you sell it for more. Thus, if you sell it for less, you have a capital loss.
Dividends are when the company pays part of its earnings out as cash to its owners (stockholders).
While dividends may look like the obvious reason to invest in a company, they are actually used more often by mature companies that aren't growing any longer. When they have earnings, they don't have much to invest in, so they pay them out as cash.
A company that doesn't pay out dividends is generally using its earnings to grow.
So one way to look at it is that if the company is reinvesting its money (and not paying dividends) it is because it believes it can make good returns on that money, and if it is paying out dividends it is because it doesn't have a better use for the money other than to give it to the owners. | [
"A high dividend yield indicates undervaluation of the stock because the stock's dividend is high relative to the stock price. High dividend yields are a particularly sought after by income and value investors. High-yield stocks tend to outperform low yield and no yield stocks during bear markets because many inves... |
I can't seem to understand escape velocity. People say it's the minimum velocity to escape a gravitational field, but don't gravitational fields extend indefinitely? | If the earth were the only celestial body in the universe and we shot a rocket with escape velocity (~11 km*h^-1 ) into space, it would never, not even after an infinite amount of time, change direction and come back to earth. That is despite the fact, that gravitational interaction has infinite reach.
The reason for this is, that gravitational force behaves proportionally to 1/r^2 , where r is the distance between the two attracting masses.
When you are traveling at escape velocity, you "outrun" this proportionality. That means, your velocity reduces at a slower rate that the gravitational force does.
Eventually, your velocity will approach zero, but, as I said above, it will never change direction. | [
"Defined a little more formally, \"escape velocity\" is the initial speed required to go from an initial point in a gravitational potential field to infinity and end at infinity with a residual speed of zero, without any additional acceleration. All speeds and velocities are measured with respect to the field. Addi... |
what's the point in distributing a video as a .rar file rather than an .avi or .mp4 file? | A rar can be split into several parts. So if a download fails part way through you just have to retry a part instead of the whole thing | [
"BULLET::::- \"DV-AVI\" is Microsoft's implementation of DV video file, which is wrapped into an AVI container. Two variants of wrapping are available: with Type 1 the multiplexed audio and video is saved into the video section of a single AVI file, with Type 2 video and audio are saved as separate streams in an AV... |
Did the income of the Papacy decrease dramatically as a result of the reformation? | I have been interested in this topic and the catholic finance situation in general. Can someone suggest some books? | [
"The Renaissance papacy began to decline when the Protestant Reformation splintered Western Christianity into denominations, and as nation-states (e.g. France, England), began asserting varying degrees of control over the Church in their territories. Other factors contributed as well; for example, by the early 1520... |
why does hate speech and whatever motives behind it still exist? | Humans spent the first 200,000 years of their existence in tribes.
Non-human hominids spent millions of years before that in tribes.
Humans have tribalism evolutionarily ingrained in their brains, there's our "tribe" and there are other "tribes" that we treat differently. Anyone who says they've *never* had a racist thought cross their minds is a liar. | [
"In national and international legislation, hate speech refers to expressions that advocate incitement to harm (particularly, discrimination, hostility or violence) based upon the target's being identified with a certain social or demographic group. It may include, but is not limited to, speech that advocates, thre... |
how come during olympics in beijing there was hardly any smog but in reality it's hard to see anything out there because of it? | China made huge efforts to clean up and make a positive impression for the Olympics because the world was watching. Factories were shut down, traffic was cut in half because you were only allowed to drive every other day. Even license places could only drive on even number days and vice versa.
Once the Olympics were over, factories started back up and the restrictions were lifted. | [
"The picture on the right shows what Beijing, China would look like if No Car Day made more of an impact on individuals. But it also shows the daily occurrence of smog filled air that accompanies China. Smog makes it hard to breathe and is unhealthy for the population.\n",
"The issue of air pollution, which was w... |
why do game developers keep stuff loaded out-of-screen? | Moving things to different locations keeps them "in memory", where it's already loaded and really quick to use/move/whatever.
If stuff is deleted the second it disappears off screen, it has to re-loaded from the hard drive each time it's used, which is way slower. | [
"There are games that require additional accessories to act as alternative ways to control the game and to bypass the limitations of a standard game controller. Such items can include light guns, electronic instruments or racing wheels.\n",
"Games that use reloads are different from games that do not because of t... |
Why are 100m athletes built like tanks in upper body? | Sprinters will often spend a lot of time working the upper body to help with their economy as they run. I recently saw a BBC documentary about Usain Bolt and when he first changed trainer the first thing his new coach did was put him onto intensive strength training for the core and upper body. The core and upper body contribute a lot to your stability, especially important when you're moving at those kinds of speeds, and not only could it help you run faster it should also help prevent injury.
Another reason behind these guys *looking* so ripped is that they are likely to have very low boy fat. | [
"Athletes are measured to compare the various physical builds of certain athletes. Some of the qualities measured include; height, weight, hand size, arm length, flexibility. The bench press is one of the most exciting drills at E-Camp, because it evaluates both the athletes strength and muscular endurance. For cer... |
the different military paths to becoming a civilian physician. | Better to ask a school counselor.
There are 2 obvious ones, go into the military and get the G.I. BILL and use it to pay off college to become a physician.
Or go into the military, preferably through OTC with some school under your belt majoring in medicine. That way the military only needs to to put you through some field medicine, then when you're out of the military they will pay the rest to finish your licensing and degrees.
After either of those paths you can be a civilian physician. | [
"The most common source of new physicians for the Army are medical students attending civilian medical schools and participating in the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP). By so participating they have their expenses paid for them and incur a 4-year service obligation. A smaller number graduate from the ... |
How large would the biggest star known to man look in the sky if we were to orbit the star in the so called Habitable zone? | The size of a star in the sky is dependent on how hot it is burning, not how big it is. If the Earth were orbiting a red dwarf, for instance, the star would appear big in the sky simply because the habitable zone is closer in relation to the star's radius. Just for kicks, let's find out the angular size of one of the biggest stars we know of!
For VY Canis Majoris, one of the biggest stars that we know of in our local universe, the habitable zone is somewhere between 600AU and 1200AU. So to keep it simple, we'll say it's 900 AU. Also, the diameter of VY Canis Majoris is 1.90357e9 miles.
So, with tan^(-1) ((1.90357e9/2)/8.366e10) we get 0.652 deg. That's the inverse tan function for the radius of the star over 900 AU converted to miles, basically just some simple trig to find the angle of the star from its center to it's edge. Multiply that by 2 to get the full star in view and we have 1.304 degrees in the sky.
For reference, our sun only takes up about 0.5 deg in the sky, so VY Canis Majoris be almost three times bigger compared to our sun angularly.
This may greatly vary, as the known values for VY Canis Majoris are widely disputed, but 1.304 degrees is approximately how big it would be in the sky for a planet in it's habitable zone.
Source for Habitable zone: _URL_1_
Source for size: _URL_2_
Edited for sources and clarity
Edit2: Felosele made a good point. The area in the sky that VY Canis Majoris would take up is close to 7 times the area that the sun takes up. Thank you!!
Edit3: [LuridTeaParty made a visual compared to the moon of how big VY Canis Majoris would look in our sky](_URL_0_) | [
"There is at least one planet on average per star. About 1 in 5 Sun-like stars have an \"Earth-sized\" planet in the habitable zone, with the nearest expected to be within 12 light-years distance from Earth. Assuming 200 billion stars in the Milky Way, that would be 11 billion potentially habitable Earth-sized plan... |
Catholic church appropriation of local gods in the Americas/New World | I can't speak on other places, but, a lot of my research deals with this in New Mexico and the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Pueblo Indians. At many, most, of the pueblos, the Catholic/Spaniard would tear down the Pueblo church and put the new Catholic church right on top of the old on. All Pueblo religious artifacts were destroyed and up went the Virgin Mary, Jesus, the Saints and so forth. Most/many of these churches are still in tact and can be visited, on tour, you can go into the one in Acoma and Taos Pueblos via tour or certain days when there are events.
There was also a habit of systematically destroying the Pueblo religion and forcing only Catholicism on the Indians. This, did not go over well and after about 80 years the Pueblos revolted.
Some books are 'The Kiva, Cross and Crown" John kessel, he does a few books on stuff like this, if you want a solid quick read then David Roberts' 'The Pueblo Revolt' has some history on it, and also the difficulties in studying the revolt. There are some other books as well, but my mind is drawing a blank and I am at work. So thank you for helping me think about something other than work!
I wish I could be more help in other areas. | [
"The first unquestioned presence of the Catholic Church in the Americas was in this region, when Christopher Columbus first set foot on San Salvador. The oldest tangible evidence of Catholicism in the New World, the Cruz de la Parra, is kept in what is now Cuba.\n",
"Throughout Latin America, the Church was subje... |
Are higher energy electromagnetic waves like gamma rays and lower energy ones like radio waves composed of photons as well, similar to the visible light spectrum? | Yes, there is nothing fundamentally different about electromagnetic waves at different energies. | [
"In astronomy, higher energy gamma and X-rays are defined by energy, since the processes that produce them may be uncertain and photon energy, not origin, determines the required astronomical detectors needed. High-energy photons occur in nature that are known to be produced by processes other than nuclear decay bu... |
Is it possible/common to get ill from a single bacterium? | It varies, even with Salmonella for example a few bacteria (10-20) can cause illness in the right circumstances where in other cases it will take millions. 1 Bacterium could cause illness but it is unlikely. | [
"A particular strain of bacteria can be nonpathogenic in one species but pathogenic in another. One species of bacterium can have many different types or strains. One strain of a bacterium species can be nonpathogenic and another strain of the same bacterium can be pathogenic.\n",
"Each species has specific effec... |
why are there several mandatory injections for schools? | Schools are the perfect places for diseases to spread. In order to protect the other students schools are allowed to mandate that you get vaccinated for some diseases. Some people cannot get vaccinated due to medical issues. So, having enough protected people around them creates a herd immunity where there aren't enough viable carriers for a disease to survive. | [
"In 2011, after pressure by activist organizations, the manufacturers of sodium thiopental and pentobarbital halted the supply of the drugs to U.S. prisons performing lethal injections and required all resellers to do the same.\n",
"The routine and irrational use of injections should also be challenged. One study... |
sharia courts in the uk | They are allowed because all the Sharia court does is alllow discussion leading to a contract between the parties in question. The contract's terms are based in sharia law, but the contract is legally binding under UK law in the offer/acceptance/consideration manner that covers all contracts. They are used to settle disputes, rather than criminal cases, and anyone is free to settle disputes in whatever manner they see fit as long as they don't do anything illegal.
Example: Dave lent Steve £5 a few weeks ago, but Steve has yet to pay him back. Dave wants Steve to pay £1 in interest on the debt, but financial interest is not allowed under Sharia law. A Sharia court is convened, the judgement is that Dave cannot charge interest and it is decided that Steve should pay back the £5. Dave and Steve agree to this and have entered into a contract to this effect, if Steve doesn't pay Dave back then Dave could take it to the small claims court as with any other minor, financial dispute.
The court cannot force payment, cannot impose fines and cannot imprison either of them. Both parties are free to refuse the judgement of the court or refuse to attend in the first place.
If they do coerce parties into attending, contravene anyone's rights or impose punishments then that is a matter for UK criminal law and there is already legal process in place to deal with this.
The good news is you can do exactly the same thing with your mates down the pub (accepting that inebriation can render a party unfit to agree to a contract), or you can set up a court of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. | [
"Although sharia is not part of the British legal system, several British establishment figures have supported its use in areas of dispute resolution in Islamic communities. For example, in February 2008 Rowan Williams the Archbishop of Canterbury (the head of the Church of England) lectured at the Royal Courts of ... |
What kind of condiments were available in the Ist century AD in Eastern-Europe? | Unfortunately, this isn't something we know very well. Eastern Europe as we think of it was generally too far away from the literate civilizations to actually have detailed ethnographies on it, and archaeology won't turn up anything without a great deal of luck. However, Tacitus in Germania says this:
"A liquor for drinking is made out of barley or other grain, and fermented into a certain resemblance to wine. The dwellers on the river-bank also buy wine. Their food is of a simple kind, consisting of wild-fruit, fresh game, and curdled milk. They satisfy their hunger without elaborate preparation and without delicacies. In quenching their thirst they are not equally moderate. If you indulge their love of drinking by supplying them with as much as they desire, they will be overcome by their own vices as easily as by the arms of an enemy. (Latin)"
The Germania has very reliable sections, and sections where Tacitus moralizes. This is one of the latter, but it is safe to say that the semi-nomadic tribes of Eastern Europe didn't have elaborate food preparation. | [
"Common and often basic ingredients in many modern European cuisines like potatoes, kidney beans, cacao, vanilla, tomatoes, chili peppers and maize were not available to Europeans until after 1492, after European contact with the Americas, and even then it often took considerable time, sometimes several centuries, ... |
how does a clicking torque wrench work? | On mine, the handle flexes once the set value is reached. There is a spring of sorts inside which creates resistance to keep the handle straight. You adjust the amount of force needed to "pop the spring" and make the handle flex by lengthening/shortening the mechanism. The mechanism makes the sound when the spring piece flips or pops. I'm not sure if spring is the exact word. | [
"A more sophisticated method of presetting torque is with a calibrated clutch mechanism. One common form uses a ball detent and spring, with the spring preloaded by an adjustable screw thread, calibrated in torque units. The ball detent transmits force until the preset torque is reached, at which point the force ex... |
What are some biological and/or chemical differences between men and women that, if mentioned, society would mistaken it for sexism? | Brain size. On average, the male brain is larger than the females. However, size is not a measure of intelligence. It is just like a 6 ft tall, 190 lb man will have a larger heart than a 5 ft 7 in, 130lb female's heart. Our organs are proportional to our body size, but we often think of the brain as a separate entity. We also commonly assume that bigger is better, so a bigger brain must mean a smarter person. This is not true, and there is no scientific data to back up such a claim. | [
"Another way gender roles affect adolescent sexuality is thought the sexual double standard. This double standard occurs when others judge women for engaging in premarital sex and for embracing their sexualities, while men are rewarded for the same behavior. It is a double standard because the genders are behaving ... |
Why is HIV found in semen? | HIV is present in saliva, but is non-infectious. It is non-infectious due to a mechanism called hypotonic disruption that kills infected mononuclear leukocytes and thwarts their attachment to mucosal epithelial cells thus preventing transmission. However, oral transmission of HIV is possible through seminal fluids and milk because of their isotonicity to saliva, which prevents the mechanism of hypotonic disruption and thus prevents the killing of HIV.
I am only able to partially answer your question because a lot of the research of HIV has been inconclusive. | [
"Twenty-seven different viruses have been identified in semen. Information on whether or not transmission occurs or whether the viruses cause disease is uncertain. Some of these microbes are known to be sexually transmitted. Those found in semen are listed by the CDC.\n",
"Any sexual activity that involves contac... |
Why are caffeine and alcohol both mind altering, addictive drugs and also strong diuretics? | I will go by each substance first.
Caffeine
The reason for caffeine being a diuretic is because it blocks the adenosine receptors in the proximal tubule of the kidney.
Alcohol
Now alcohol on the other hand inhibits the anti-diuretic hormone by blocking the calcium channels in the pituitary gland. (Also kind of important to add is that when people consume things like beer, they are already ingesting a lot more fluids then they normally would, so increased urination should be expected just by that fact)
So in conclusion the mechanism of diuresis in both of these substances is a bit different as they target different areas in the body to increase the production of urine.
As for why they are mind altering and addictive is because both of them can cross the blood brain barrier and affect the cells. In some ways they can stimulate dopamine receptors (so kind of a reward for taking both of them in). However again, both of them target different areas. While caffeine attaches more to the adenosine receptors, alcohol suppresses glutamate. | [
"Combined use of caffeine and alcohol may increase the rate of alcohol-related injury. Energy drinks can mask the influence of alcohol, and a person may misinterpret their actual level of intoxication. Since caffeine and alcohol are both diuretics, combined use increases the risk of dehydration, and the mixture of ... |
why aren't catholics considered christian? | Some Protestant Christians don't count Roman Catholics Christians as "Christian".
Pretty much everyone else does.
Off the top of my head, I can think of two reasons why some Protestants believe this.
First, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism have some pretty fundamental differences of opinion about doctrines central to the Christian faith. The Protestants in question think that these differences are significant enough to disqualify Roman Catholics from counting as "Christian".
Second, there's a widely recognized phenomenon in American Catholicism wherein people who have been baptized in the Catholic church continue to call themselves "Catholic" even though they never attend Mass (or do so only once or twice a year) and do not live their lives with any consideration for Catholic ethical teachings. To the extent that they are Catholic, it is purely cultural. The Vatican isn't very happy about this, but it still considers such people "Catholic" and therefore "Christian." But Protestants tend to have a less institutional definition for what makes someone a "Christian," and are far more willing to look at people's lives in their analysis. Such a Catholic would not count as "Christian" under that kind of Protestant analysis, regardless of the theological differences between the traditions.
In all fairness, the Protestants who don't think Catholics count as "Christians" would probably say the same thing about liberal Protestants too. They decide to call someone a "Christian" or not, not on the basis of belonging to a religious organization/institution, but on the basis of personal belief and conduct. In short, if you don't believe the "right" things *and* conduct your life in the "right" way, there is a significant segment of Protestantism that wouldn't consider you to be a Christian.
For the record, all I'm doing here is being descriptive. I make no comment as to whether any of this is *right*, only that it is an accurate description of how things are. | [
"Some members of various Christian denominations may use the term \"Evangelical Catholic\" to indicate the fact that they are evangelical and maintain their catholicity. For example, Methodists and Presbyterians believe their denominations owe their origins to the Apostles and the early church, but do not claim des... |
Is everything moving away from our galaxy or are some galaxies moving at the speed and direction of us? | Expansion is carrying galaxies that are very far from us further away, but there are plenty of local galaxies that are moving toward or past us. For example, the Andromeda galaxy is on a collision course with our own. | [
"In models of the expanding universe, the farther galaxies are from each other, the faster they drift apart. This receding is not due to motion \"through\" space, but rather to the expansion of space itself. For example, galaxies far away from Earth appear to be moving away from the Earth with a speed proportional ... |
A lot of Andalusian architecture stayed after the Reconquista--did many Arabic designs survive after the Norman conquest of Sicily? | Combining early modern Spain's fixation on being the Christianest kingdom that ever Christianed with the Sicilian Normans' strategic deployment of Arab/Islamic models of governance and asserting power, you'd think it would be *Sicily* with the lavish assortment of glittering churches made out of mosques and repurposed palaces from the time of Muslim rule. But the situation is the exact opposite, for a whole cascade of reasons.
First, much of pre-1100 Sicilly's religious architecture was not originally Islamic in the first place. In addition to building new structures, Muslims converted a *lot* of existing Byzantine churches into mosques. One of the very few surviving mosque= > churches, San Giovanni degli Eremeti in Palermo, started its life as a Greek church, in fact! And it's apparent that even the Greek Christians often built on older *pagan* temple sites--the idea of "sacred spaces" must have run strong. San Giovanni dei Lebbrosi, for example, was built by 12th century Normans on top of some kind of ruins--Alex Metcalfe notes that we don't know whether that means mosque, church= > mosque, or even pre-Byzantine.
Second, the initial Norman invasion and conquest definitely destroyed mosques and fortresses in its course, as you would probably expect. There's not as much direct evidence for this, but the scarcity of later references to mosques in written sources suggests a strongly depleted field of Islamic religious structures. (They absolutely exist, but Metcalfe's list of attested mosques numbers in single digits.)
Third, the course of Norman governance lent itself to the construction of new churches and monasteries on one hand, and the destruction of secular fortresses on the other. Successive Norman rulers opted to govern through *ecclesiastical* lords, whose appointment they could have some or lots of control over, rather than through secular lords who gained and held power over territory by building castles and raiding from them (incastellamento). So the Williams and Rogers and everyone heavily patronized new Christian construction on one hand, while demolishing secular fortifications to prevent their use by lords as "castles" (in the strategic sense).
Third, nature. An 1169 earthquake that was especially severe in the still-heavily-Muslim western part of the island was apparently devastating to standing architecture. Combine that with shifting population patterns, and Muslim chroniclers a decade and a half later are talking about *ruins*, about crumbling and decay.
Fourth, the Normans are but one player in this game. After all, Roger I in particular is noted for his conversion of mosques into churches during the initial conquest. And later Norman rulers, fitting with their general pattern of *freshly adopting* signals of power and administration from the Fatimids in Egypt, deployed Islamic architecture styles in their own, new construction! But later waves of island oversight would not always be thinking of a future with UNESCO heritage sites. When suppressing Muslim revolts in the 13th century, Frederick II dismantled some of the last standing fortresses (famously at Entrella, which had been a fortified site going back to pre-Christian Sicily!). And one of the known mosque= > church conversions, St. Thomas of Canterbury in Marsala, was torn down in the 17th century and rebuilt as Marsala's cathedral church by the 18th.
The array of reasons for the dearth of visible Islamic Sicily-era survival on the island (as opposed to Norman appropriation) seems like a story in and of itself. But it's important to keep in mind that it coincides with an *overall* difficulty in tracing Muslim influences in modern Sicilian culture. Still, despite the lack of *direct* survivals, [scholars have worked together](_URL_0_) to build up a picture of a definite cultural legacy for Islamic Sicily as an economic and imagined entity.
If you're interested in reading more, Alex Metcalfe's *The Muslims of Medieval Italy* is the best overview, but it's really dense--a complete infodump. I think you personally would enjoy Karla Mallette, *The Kingdom of Sicily, 1100-1250: A Literary History* (which I mentioned in the linked answer, not here), for reasons that should be apparent from its title but also because it was quite interesting. | [
"Andalusia saw many waves of invaders and settlers: the ancient Iberians were followed by Celts, Phoenicians and other Eastern Mediterranean traders, Romans, migrating Germanic tribes, North African Muslims, and the Castilians and other Spanish of the Reconquista. Granada was the last Muslim kingdom in Spain, survi... |
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