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stocks/shares of a company | You cannot sell without a buyer and you can't buy without a seller; this is how the price is determined. Using your example, if you want to sell 10 of your shares, but you can't find a buyer, you'll keep lowering the price until someone buys them. Maybe no one was interested at $10 a share, but at $8.50 someone wanted to buy 5 of them and then at $7.75 someone else bought the remaining 5.
Now the stock has a lower worth because it's valued at the last trade--which was $7.75 instead of the $10 it used to be worth. But someone thinks $7.75 is a great deal for this stock and wants to buy 20 shares! (This is your friend D.) But, someone already owns each of the shares, so he goes to the shareholders (really, uses the market) and puts in a bid for 20 shares at $7.75. No one wants to sell. He makes his bid higher, "I'll buy 20 shares for $8!" he says. To this, the guy who bought 5 for $7.75 says, "I'll sell you 5 at $8!" He sells his stock to D and now he made a profit. D can keep raising his bid until he has all 20 shares that he wants or one of the shareholders can sell at a loss.
Liquidity is when a market moves a lot--share prices move up and down easily and frequently. When there are many traders, day traders for example, they help provide liquidity to the market. Because they don't care about the stock, they only care about turning quick profits, they are helpful to people who just want to sell or buy something and need people on the other end. I hope this was helpful! | [
"The stock (also capital stock) of a corporation is all of the shares into which ownership of the corporation is divided. In American English, the shares are commonly known as \"stocks\". A single share of the stock represents fractional ownership of the corporation in proportion to the total number of shares. This... |
- how can a centrifuge create a vacuum? | simpler explanation- when the centrifuge seperates everything because of the pull to the outside of the container, the air inside the container does the same. so if all the matter is pushed into the corners of the container, the middle is empty and thus creates a vacuum. this vacuum then allows the water to "boil" off (if the vacuum is maintained and strong) because the boiling point of water decreases in a vacuum. | [
"Another theoretical machine involves a frictionless environment for motion. This involves the use of diamagnetic or electromagnetic levitation to float an object. This is done in a vacuum to eliminate air friction and friction from an axle. The levitated object is then free to rotate around its center of gravity w... |
I read that when Napoleon attacked in 1796, the Republic of Venice had hardly any military left to defend itself. How come Venice hadn't already lost Dalmatia to the Ottomans or Lombardy-Venetia to the Habsburgs by then? | I'm confused. What happened to their army? Was it destroyed in prior battles with napoleon? | [
"By 1796, the Republic of Venice could no longer defend itself since its war fleet numbered only four galleys and seven galliots. In spring 1796, Piedmont fell, and the Austrians were beaten from Montenotte to Lodi. The army under Bonaparte crossed the frontiers of neutral Venice in pursuit of the enemy. By the end... |
why has the recommended method for cpr been changed to compressions only? | Not many people know how to properly do CPR. Because of this, research has shown that people are more likely to help someone using CPR if it's hands-only. Hence Hands-only CPR is being recommended so that some help is actually given to the person in need of it.
They're not saying use hands-only instead of hands and breathing. They're saying if you know how to properly do CPR with hands and breathing, then do it. Otherwise stick to hands-only. | [
"To promote CPR, Jude, Knickerbocker, and Safar began a world speaking tour. In 1962 Gordon, along with David Adams, produced a 27-minute training film called \"The Pulse of Life.\" The film was used in CPR classes and viewed by millions of students. For the film, Gordon and Adams devised the easy to remember mnemo... |
why do we get more excited for food than water, when we would die much faster without the latter? | I would expect you've never been *really* thirsty because of actual dehydration, because - trust me on this - a mud puddle next to an outhouse would taste like heaven then.
Under normal temperatures and activity levels, our bodies are crafted to become hungry well before we become thirsty, likely because high-quality food has traditionally been scarcer than water from our ancient ape days.
Also, we get a fair amount of moisture from the food we eat (don't believe that six-glasses-of-water-a-day crap!), so eating often solves both the hunger and thirst drivers at the same time. | [
"The report's authors forecast that the need for water would double within 50 years, due to global population rise, more people choosing to eat a diet of meat and vegetables rather than primarily consuming cereals, and climate change. Generally, about one litre of liquid water gets converted to water vapour to prod... |
Why did Mussolini, who initially had threatened Germany with war in case it tried to invade Austria in 1934, chose to abandon Austria to be annexed by Germany only four years later? | Mussolini was an incredible opportunist and the pivot to Germany was due a changing political situation.
The first reason concerned the Italian region of South Tirol, a predominantly German speaking region that by all the rhetoric of Hitler was to be part of the German Reich. This was one of the major reasons that prompted the Italian stance in Hitlers first Anschluss. The second attempt was accompanied with a German guarantee that South Tirol was not to be part of the Third Reich.
The second reason was that Mussolini had from 33 onward had made it clear to the UK and France that he was willing to maintain the status quo in Europe. In exchange for this, he wanted to have a free hand in Africa along with some border corrections and ceding of colonial possessions. He got the French to give him a free hand in Abyssinia. When that invasion took place however, the League of Nations passed a series of symbolic embargoes, where any real economic hurt was avoided due to very heavy French pressure, which hoped to keep Italy part of the Stresa front, a three-way alliance between France, Italy and the United Kingdom. For instance, sanctions included the banning of aluminium to Italy, one of the few materials of which Italy produced a surplus. Likewise the sale of war critical resources such as oil was left mostly alone.
With the League condemning the invasion the Germans vocally supported the Italian invasion and supplied Italy with some materials that were cut off.
Between returning a favor and the Guarantee meant that the original reason for an independent Austria, to function as a buffer between Italy and Germany was now gone, and as such, Mussolini had no issues giving it up, which in turn cemented the Axis marriage (although it would be a rather unhappy one) | [
"This assassination by the Austrian Nazis infuriated Austria's neighbor, Fascist Italy under dictator Benito Mussolini. Fascist Italy had good relations with Austria under Dollfuss and Mussolini suspected German involvement and promised the Austrofascist regime military support if Germany were to invade, as the Naz... |
Can a kangaroo walk or must it always hop? | Technically, because the tail is boned, muscular and used as a foot (and not anything else) there's an argument to classify it as a leg.
So yes, they "walk" by pushing slowly against the ground with their tail and moving both feet out in front, then planting the tail close to their feet again. Repeat. | [
"Tree-kangaroos are slow and clumsy on the ground. They move at approximately human walking pace and hop awkwardly, leaning their body far forward to balance the heavy tail. However, in trees, they are bold and agile. They climb by wrapping their forelimbs around the trunk of a tree and, while allowing the forelimb... |
why do i feel depressed after waking up after sleeping in the middle of the day? | Loss of regimen can cause depressive thoughts. The again so can a 9 to 5 regimen. Fuck work. | [
"Depression is sometimes associated with insomnia - (difficulty in falling asleep, early waking, or waking in the middle of the night). The combination of these two results, depression and insomnia, will only worsen the situation. Hence, good sleep hygiene is important to help break this vicious circle. It would in... |
To what extent did ancient Italian and Germanic conquerors like the Franks and Romans replace the majority Celts of France, England, or Spain? | This question is what my research centered on (the Roman-Gallic aspect). There is no record of a depopulation of Gaul following Roman conquest. Gaul was changed considerably by Roman conquest and it was mostly the result of Gauls adopting aspects of Roman culture to create a new Gallo-Roman culture. Certainly, there were many Roman soldiers who settled in Gaul after their service and they contributed to the changing culture in Gaul. But, most of the change came from the Gauls themselves as they adopted to the new world they lived in.
We know that where native Gauls/Celts typically lived in hilltop, walled settlements, Romans preferred to build cities in valleys near their newly-built roads or near rivers. And through the archaeological record, we can see Gallic settlements emptying out as Roman cities grew nearby. It appears that most Gauls voluntarily chose to move from their native towns into the more economically and socially *Roman* cities that began to spring up around the turn of the millenia.
We can tell that lots of other aspects of Roman culture were adopted fairly quickly (by the end of the first century AD) by much of Gaul, which I can elaborate on, if you'd like. To answer your question succinctly: though there was some resettlement, the majority of the change in Celtic/Gallic culture came about as a result of Gauls adopting Roman socio-cultural norms.
For some reading on the subject, check out [Becoming Roman](_URL_0_) by Greg Woolf | [
"More broadly, early Medieval Germanic peoples were often assimilated into the \"walha\" substrate cultures of their subject populations. Thus, the Burgundians of Burgundy, the Vandals of Northern Africa, and the Visigoths of France and Iberia, lost some Germanic identity and became part of Romano-Germanic Europe. ... |
movie stars training routines | I can't speak to the physical benefits, but movie stars have to work out early because their shooting schedule is dictated by the sun. They have to do it before sunrise otherwise they might not get the chance. | [
"Prior to filming, the cast had twelve weeks of training and fight evaluations, beginning in June 2009 in Los Angeles and continuing through filming. The leads in the film were trained to deadlift up to for their roles. Damon Caro, the stunt coordinator and fight choreographer from \"300\" and \"Watchmen\", Snyder'... |
How does the ISS handle debris on its solar panels? How often does the ISS get hit with debris? | Hey, this question is right up my alley!
Bit of background: I've done testing and analysis for the ISS program on this exact topic, including hypervelocity impact testing into ISS solar cells at NASA's White Sands Test Facility back in 2014.
Second question first: the ISS gets hit more or less constantly. This is largely a function of just how big it is. A back of the envelope analysis we did several years ago suggests that the solar arrays are struck by something big enough to cause degradation approximately once every ten minutes. Downlinked imagery supports this - on one returned solar array image, we were able to count nearly 200 strikes on an area covering less than four square meters.
As far as how it is handled: there's not much we can do other than to monitor performance and plan accordingly. With a few notable exceptions, individual MMOD strikes to the solar arrays have very little effect, but the accumulation of strikes presents as a gradual loss in power production capability over time. To combat this, you try to predict the rate of degradation and size your arrays so that they will produce the needed power at end of life.
In the case of ISS, the degradation rates from all sources used in the early 1990s when they were designed ended up underpredicting the overall rate of power loss. They are currently exploring sending up new arrays to augment power production at some point in the future. | [
"Space debris objects are tracked remotely from the ground, and the station crew can be notified. This allows for a Debris Avoidance Manoeuvre (DAM) to be conducted, which uses thrusters on station to change orbital velocity and altitude, avoiding the debris. DAMs will take place if computational models show the de... |
Why are screens (CRT, LCD, Plasma, etc...) black when off? | They are black to maximize contrast for all three color channels (red, green, blue).
The screens you are talking about use [emitted light](_URL_1_), as opposed to [reflected light](_URL_0_), like paper or e-paper (e.g. the Kindle). When the screen is off, that is the darkest it can ever possibly be.
If the screen were white when off, you would never be able to see a good black because the screen cannot cancel out the white reflected light. If the screen were green, you would never be able to see anything red or blue or magenta (those colors being characterized by an absence of green). | [
"Tru Black is a technology developed by Sony which allows a better visualization of the screen, even when there is too much light. It enables LCD screens to automatically change the display contrast in order to enhance the controlling reflectance. In other words, when light hits a display with Tru Black technology,... |
Which cools my morning coffee faster? Pouring my creamer in slowly or quickly? | Assuming you'd be done with both procedures at the same time wait as long as you can, then drop in the milk.
Because of the greater temperature differential the coffee will cool faster without the milk in it. | [
"Another variation is cold brew coffee, sometimes known as \"cold press.\" Cold water is poured over coffee grounds and allowed to steep for eight to twenty-four hours. The coffee is then filtered, usually through a very thick filter, removing all particles. This process produces a very strong concentrate which can... |
how does a popular website like _url_0_ get away with caller id spoofing and call recording when it is illegal in the united states? | Because they are located outside of the US. Caller ID is a series of tones that are sent between the first and second ring. If you have an old analog phone, and you pick it up in the middle of the first ring, you can hear a slight hiss, that's the caller id data.
Sending your own caller ID data is trivial with VoIP, if you control the equipment. | [
"Caller ID spoofing is generally illegal in the United States if done \"with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value\". The relevant federal statute, the Truth in Caller ID Act of 2009, does make exceptions for certain law-enforcement purposes. Callers are also still allowed to pre... |
why do some eateries and gas stations have a "if you don't get a receipt at the time of your purchase, your food is free" policy? do people actually demand free goods upon not receiving a receipt? | It forces the employees to generate a receipt which means it forces the employees to add something to the records about this purchase.
An absentee owner of some food place wants an assurance their employees don't hand over food, accept payment then claim the food was lost to spoilage while pocketing the money. | [
"Another problem is when customers legitimately purchase an item, then re-enter the store with the receipt, take an identical item off the shelf, and approach the customer service desk requesting a refund. In the process, they essentially receive the item for free, and may be charged with shoplifting or another sim... |
what are conservative critics actually implying about benghazi? | Blaming it on some youtube video was ridiculous. It happened because of targeted killings by JSOC. The truth is Obama has had more people killed under his command then Bush did. | [
"Rizvi has stated that right-wing populist politicians are correct in challenging \"authoritarian, totalitarian ideas that are in the scriptures\", although many other people including Muslims themselves have also done that throughout the ages. On the other hand, Rizvi opposes special Muslim profiling, demonisation... |
why did hitler think blonde-haired blue-eyed people were genetically dominant when he had neither of those traits? | He thought *Aryans* were genetically dominant. The stereotypical Aryan was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, but that's just like the stereotypical Japanese person having straight jet-black hair; few people thought that you had to look like the stereotype to be Asian.
In general, the Nazi beliefs about race weren't nearly as extreme as people like to think. They *acted* on their beliefs in extreme ways, but the belief in white northern European supremacy was pretty widespread among white northern Europeans, and the Nazi version wasn't all that much different. | [
"Although the physical ideal of these racial theorists was typically the tall, fair-haired and light-eyed Nordic individual, such theorists accepted the fact that a considerable variety of hair and eye colour existed within the racial categories they recognised. For example, Adolf Hitler and many Nazi officials had... |
why does a page that failed to load end up loading as soon as you hit the back button? | The browser is waiting for all the data to finish transferring before it renders it. Hitting back stops the transfer and it renders the page. If you hit the stop button it would have the same effect. | [
"Consider a web browser which attempts to load a page while the network is unavailable. The browser will receive an error code indicating the problem, and may display this error message to the user in place of the requested page. However, it is incorrect for the browser to place the error message in the page cache,... |
why doesn't the un just bomb isis back to the stone age? | Well, problem 1 is that the UN doesn't actually have military forces to do the bombing. But we'll leave that aside.
The real issue is that, as we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan, just bombing terrorists doesn't work. They hide amongst the regular civilians, and use innocent people as cover. Yes, we could hit their "regular" forces, but then they'd just dissolve and go back to being guerrillas. It doesn't fix the problem. You really need to have an overwhelming police force around to keep them in check.
As for why no one is willing to commit that amount of force, again, look at Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers sent, trillions of dollars spent, thousands of fatalities, and for what? We were able to keep "order", but it was still a failed state. It's the same with the territory taken by ISIS. It's a quagmire you'd be throwing money and men into, with no clear endgame. In many ways, the people doing the police actions might just be making things worse. After all, how many innocent people did the American military wind up killing? It's pretty much impossible to avoid collateral damage, and if you have to kill thousnads of innocent people to stop terrorists from killing innocent people, you're kind of just pissing in the wind. | [
"In 2016, during its brief conquest of the region, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) demolished Ashurnasirpal II's ziggurat of Ninurta at Kalhu. This act was in line with ISIL's longstanding policy of destroying any ancient ruins which it deemed incompatible with its militant interpretation of Islam. ... |
why, when i get a zit on my nasal septum, does it hurt so much? | Because your pain receptors are highly concentrated there, since it's an important part of your body. More pain receptors = more pain. | [
"The pressure difference causes the mucosal lining of the sinuses to become swollen and submucosal bleeding follows with further difficulties ventilating the sinus, especially if the orifices are involved. Ultimately fluid or blood will fill the space.\n",
"Mumps is seen to be a common cause of parotid gland swel... |
why do most stds spread via sexual intercourse and not through other actions like making out? | There's different answers for STDs, so I'll take you through each one. The major STDs are: Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Syphilis, Herpes, HPV (genital warts) and HIV.
1. Gonorrhea: Gonorrhea is a bacterial infection caused by the microbe Neisseria Gonorrhoeae. This microbe has a predilection for infecting epithelial cells (such as those found in the urethra). It is actually able to both attach to the cell lining as well as to invade cells and live inside them. It is spread through sexual secretions (semen, vaginal secretions) when cells slough off into the secretions. It is completely possible to get gonorrhea in your throat, and is actually more common than you might think. It causes an infection that presents somewhat similar to strep throat.
2. Chlamydia: Chlamydia is also a bacterial infection caused by the microbe Chlamydia Trachomatis. Just like Gonorrhea, it is able to invade cells, but chlamydia can only live inside cells (similar to a virus). It is spread the exact same way as gonorrhea, and can also infect the throat. However, Chlamydia tends to present with a cough as well as conjunctivitis (eye inflammation).
3. Syphilis is another bacterial infection caused by the microbe Treponema Pallidum. It has a complex pathogenesis and life cycle and initial infection results in a chancre (a large painless ulcer, beware when googling images of this). It then enters the blood and lymphatics and disseminates throughout the body where it lies dormant for a while. Syphilis is spread by blood and bodily secretions (not saliva, due to unclear reasons, likely due to the presence of antibacterial substances). Syphilis can also be transmitted by oral sex, however it doesn't typically affect the throat. It tends to form a chancer on the lips or on the inside of the cheek.
4. Herpes is a virus that is spread by direct contact. It can appear almost anywhere on the body, but is most common on the lips and genitals.
5. HPV (human papilloma virus) is a virus that, like Herpes, is spread by direct contact. Only 6-10 strains (out of hundreds) actually cause symptoms-some strains cause warts, others are linked to cancer. The HPV vaccine protects against the strains most associated with warts and cancer.
6. HIV is a virus that is spread in blood and bodily fluids (again, not saliva). It is only infectious if it is able to enter through and open wound and get into the blood. Anal sex inherently creates numerous microtears in the rectum, and thus increases the risk of HIV transmission (this is why homosexual practices are associated with higher levels of HIV transmission and thus why HIV was once considered a disease of gay men). It is theoretically possible to get HIV from oral sex, however I am not aware of any actual confirmed cases of this. HIV is destroyed by stomach acid, so it would have to infect its host prior to entering the stomach.
There are other STDs, but these are the most well known ones. | [
"Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are bacteria, viruses or parasites that are spread by sexual contact, especially vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse, or unprotected sex. Oral sex is less risky than vaginal or anal intercourse. Many times, STIs initially do not cause symptoms, increasing the risk of unknowing... |
why do scientist focuses outer space discovery rather than exploring the sea bottom? | It is actually easier to explore space and mars than it is to explore the sea bottom. Water pressure is that big of a hinderance and a threat. | [
"Deep-sea exploration is the investigation of physical, chemical, and biological conditions on the sea bed, for scientific or commercial purposes. Deep-sea exploration is considered a relatively recent human activity compared to the other areas of geophysical research, as the depths of the sea have been investigate... |
amicus curiae briefs | "Are you not actually involved in the case at hand?"
"Do you want to show off to your political partners that you have an active interest in how this country is run?"
"Do you want to put those evil activist judges in their place?"
"File an amicus curiae brief and don't worry about it being ignored!" | [
"The Supreme Court received over two dozen briefs of \"amicus curiae\" on the case, including some written strictly on the history and application of Habeas Corpus in England, Scotland, Hanover, Ireland, Canada, British-controlled territories, India, and the United States. Twenty-two amicus briefs were filed in sup... |
where did the southern stereotype of a "hick" or "redneck" come from/start | I read somewhere (I believe it was a TIL) that the term 'Redneck' came from striking coal miners in Appalachian Mountains because they wore red bandanas around their necks as a sign of protest. | [
"\"Rednecks\" is sung from the perspective of a Southern \"redneck\". In it, he expresses his dismay at the way that the North looks down upon The South. In particular, the narrator describes his ire at watching a \"smart-ass, New York Jew\" mock Lester Maddox on a television program. (This is an allusion to Maddox... |
Could an STD ever become extinct? | In most cases no the bacteria or virus normally lives in animals as a similar strain to humans.
It rather depends on whether or not humans are the only reservoir for the disease in many cases this isn't true such as chlamydia and HIV which are present as different strains in other animals, so the disease cause is still going to be prevelent even if it was removed from all the infected humans.
One example of where it could is syphilis, humans are the only reservoir, the bacteria is also very slow growing (so much so that the immune system doesn't even recognise it) has limited infectious periods and is killed off by even the simplest of antibiotic that most bacteria have become resistant to, penicillin. | [
"Not all STIs are symptomatic, and symptoms may not appear immediately after infection. In some instances a disease can be carried with no symptoms, which leaves a greater risk of passing the disease on to others. Depending on the disease, some untreated STIs can lead to infertility, chronic pain or death.\n",
"I... |
why islam if often linked with acts of terrorism? | Their "perfect words of God" beliefs are incompatible with an evolving society.
the Quran orders muslims to spread and transform the world into a Caliphate.
Because most muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are muslims. | [
"Islamic terrorism, Islamist terrorism or radical Islamic terrorism refers to terrorist acts committed by Muslims, particularly violent Islamists, who claim a religious rationale for these acts. Islamic terrorists justify their religious terrorism and extreme political violence through a utopic political vision of ... |
how do reddit bots like the "autotldr" bot work? how can it summarize a news article? | The bot's comments have a FAQ which should answer your question.
It rates the importance of sentences based on the frequency of words used. | [
"BULLET::::- The Reddit bot \"autotldr\", created in 2011 summarizes news articles in the comment-section of reddit posts. It was found to be very useful by the reddit community which upvoted its summaries hundreds of thousands of times. The name is reference to TL;DR − Internet slang for \"too long; didn't read\".... |
How does forensics find one small sample of DNA in a pool of larger DNA? | They use a technique called PCR to drastically increase the amount of genetic material they have to work with this can then be analysed using a variety of techniques, such as either full or partial sequencing.
Partial sequencing is far more common as sample as are likely to be incomplete ( known as fragments)
Murillo fragments are likely to be sequenced to build a DNA fingerprint, this can then be compared to any possible suspects.
Source [Forensic DNA analysis A PRIMER FOR COURTS](_URL_0_) | [
"As detection methods in DNA profiling advance, forensic scientists are seeing more DNA samples that contain mixtures, as even the smallest contributor is now able to be detected by modern tests. The ease in which forensic scientists have in interpenetrating DNA mixtures largely depends on the ratio of DNA present ... |
I'm living in Ancient Rome and I just murdered someone. What chances do I have of getting caught? | To answer this I should start with a quote:
> “During the Roman republic murder was not a crime…republican Romans had neither the capacity nor the inclination to make the essentially private act of malicious and intentional homicide an offense actionable by the government…The Romans not only had no legislation prohibiting murder, they had no word for murder.”
(Judy E. Gaughan, *Murder Was Not a Crime: Homicide and Power in the Roman Republic* (University of Texas Press, 2010), pg. 1-3)
Sounds like you could just go around murdering people whenever you wanted! But that was obviously not the case. The Romans did think that murder was a crime, but they didn’t have a police force, and the state was not a legal person like it is today. The government couldn’t act on its own accord to prosecute anyone for a crime committed by one private citizen against another private citizen.
If you murdered someone, your chances of being caught depended entirely on another citizen accusing you. The murdered person’s family would be responsible for bringing an “action” to the court. The person in charge of accepting or rejecting actions in ancient Rome was the praetor, who would then appoint a judge to hear the case. Then it was up the dead person’s relatives to convince the judge that you were the murderer - they or someone else saw you do it, you had the motive/opportunity, you had a weapon, bloody hands, etc. If the dead person didn’t have any family, or anyone else to vouch for them in court, then your chances of getting caught were zero.
Essentially “The system as a whole seems to have been designed to work best as a state-sponsored form of arbitration” (Andrew M. Riggsby, *Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans*, Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 116). The case could be settled with a fine or some other mutual settlement, or for a particularly bad case maybe you could be exiled or forced to work in the mines. The *Lex Cornelia*, for example (issued by Sulla in 81 BC) said that anyone convicted of murder should be exiled. But there was no state prison, and the state typically couldn’t execute you for a crime against some other citizen.
The exception to this was if you killed your own relative, your father especially, but any other family member too. Under the *Lex Pompeia de parricida* (issued by Pompey sometime in the 1st century BC), you would be “sewed up in a sack and thrown into the sea” (maybe with a monkey tied in the sack with you...just to make things more interesting). Later in the imperial era you could also be burned to death. But still, someone else would have to bring you before the court first.
It didn’t work the other way around though, because as *paterfamilias*, a father always had the right to kill any family member for whatever reason. There were also some other occasions when killing someone was perfectly legal. The earliest laws in the Twelve Tables (about 450 BC) don’t say anything about murder as a crime, but you were allowed to kill a thief breaking into your house at night (Table VIII). According to Augustus’ *Lex Julia,* a father could legally kill a man committing “adultery” with his daughter. The husband could also kill the adulterer, but not his wife, although if he did kill his adulterous wife he probably wouldn’t be punished.
Unlawful killing is mentioned in the laws most often in the context of slaves killing or being killed. If you killed someone’s slave, the slave’s owner couldn’t bring an action against you for killing the slave (because the slave was not a legal person), but it was considered damage to property, so you would be liable for reimbursing the cost of the slave/the slave’s labour. This was part of the *Lex Aquilia*, dated to the 3rd century BC.
Your chances of being caught if you weren’t a citizen were much higher, especially if you were a slave, and especially if you killed your master. That was an unthinkably bad crime for the Romans. Unlike a citizen, you would definitely be caught, tortured, and killed. (Torturing slaves was a really important part of the process for some reason.) I'm not sure what happened if you were a freedman, but freedman could be re-enslaved if they committed other crimes.
So in brief: the state arresting you and punishing you is a very modern concept. If you murdered someone, it was up to that person’s relatives to bring you to court; if they didn't, you could probably get away with it. | [
"The first murder is believed to have happened at the body's site of discovery. Only then could the offender have understood that throwing a body or dying victim down the sewers is a way to get rid of them. The rapid disappearance of the bodies allowed these acts to happen in the densely populated Frankfurt area, w... |
how all romaine lettuce could be contaminated and not just lettuce from one or two farms or producers? | The same E. coli strain found in sickened people across the country was also in Arizona’s canal water, which is used to irrigate crops.
America has poor regulation of water used on crops. Only very large farms, rather than all farms, are required to sample and test the water used to grow and clean produce. The E. coli tests the big farms use are ineffective. They don't measure for the specific types of E. coli that can make people sick.
Six months ago, under orders from the President the FDA delayed implementation of better test requirements for 4 years. This will save growers ~$12 million dollars | [
"On 15 May 2007, USDA announced that swine that ate melamine-tainted food have been cleared for human consumption. About 56,000 pigs have been affected in several states. However, no tests have been carried out on the effects of cyanuric acid in pork as well as possible effects of interaction with melamine in the b... |
how is a 5000 pages long deal like the tpp constructed? | Hundreds of lawyers are collaborating to write up a deal like that. And yes, when they compose the end product, they will laboriously read through the entire thing and make sure it's all right. | [
"The contract for sale was a one-page form and contained paragraphs in various type sizes on the front and back of the form. Mr. Henningsen testified he did not read all paragraphs of the contract. The back of the contract contained the following clause:\n",
"At the same time that Oliphant was appointed editor, t... |
how do we know that people with amnesia aren't faking it? | Very simply, we don't know for 100%. We can look at damage done, and brain scans, and see that there is a good chance that they have suffered from it, but we don't really have any concrete ways to verify.
Edit: I suppose you could give them a lie detector test, and straight up ask them, but those things aren't very accurate and can easily be beat. | [
"A person with amnesia may slowly be able to recall their memories or work with an occupational therapist to learn new information to replace what was lost, or to use intact memories as a basis for taking in new information. If it is caused by an underlying cause such as Alzheimer's disease or infections, the cause... |
when you hear "man accused of sex and drug trafficking found dead in jail cell", how do the inmates know what the guy was guilty of? couldn't he have easily lied to protect himself? | Yes, could have lied. But, the crime is public record. | [
"A criminal justice official speculated that the answer may lie in the perpetrator's high social and financial status affording him well-qualified lawyers prosecutors hesitated to confront. \"If his name was John Brown, he would have been in jail\", the official said. \"If a woman says, 'He's the guy that raped me,... |
Question about semen/proteins | Do you happen to suffer any of the symptoms of [retrograde ejaculation](_URL_0_)?
Here's a [wiki link](_URL_1_) to the composition of human semen. Although I can't possibly come up with the mechanism you ask for, from that list, mucus struck my eye as a culprit. | [
"The protein encoded by this gene is the predominant protein in semen. The encoded secreted protein is involved in the formation of a gel matrix that encases ejaculated spermatozoa. The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) protease processes this protein into smaller peptides, with each possibly having a separate functi... |
how do we know that our calendar is accurate? | The winter and summer solstices are easily known, so could be used to keep calendars on track. Besides, religious/mystic people even 2000 years ago would keep track. | [
"The primary practical use of a calendar is to identify days: to be informed about or to agree on a future event and to record an event that has happened. Days may be significant for agricultural, civil, religious or social reasons. For example, a calendar provides a way to determine when to start planting or harve... |
at what point, if any, are humans affected by electromagnetism? | There are many different kinds of EM waves, distinguished by frequency (or wavelength, which is directly caused by frequency).
High frequency waves like X-rays can give you cancer or kill you.
Somewhat high frequency waves like ultraviolet can give you cancer or burn your skin.
Medium frequency waves like microwaves can cook you, but only if you are exposed to a lot of them.
Low frequency waves may or may not have any effect on you. | [
"While health effects from extremely low frequency (ELF) electric and magnetic fields (0 to 300 Hz) generated by power lines, and radio/microwave frequencies (RF) (10 MHz - 300 GHz) emitted by radio antennas and wireless networks have been well studied, the intermediate range (IR) used increasingly in modern teleco... |
how do cancer awareness walks or "walk for the cure" type of events actually help to cure people of cancer? | Two ways it helps:
* It raises awareness. A lot of cancer can be less dangerous if people take some efforts to get tested. Seeings these events makes people think about it, which definitely saves lives.
* It raises money. Any medical research costs money, and this often goes to support that. It might also go to paying for cancer care for certain people/groups. | [
"The charity works hard to promote prevention as a way of reducing cancer and other diseases. It sees the success of reducing lung cancer by smoking cessation programmes as a text book example of how prevention can work effectively. It would like to see healthcare professionals advocating for the reduction of human... |
why does heat relax our muscles but makes meat tense up? | At that temperature your meat will also tense up lol. To answer your question. A little heat increases blood flow. Muscles become relaxed as a result. Intense heat dehydrates meat and makes it tougher | [
"Toughness in meat is derived from several proteins, such as actin, myosin and collagen, that combined form the structure of the muscle tissue. Heating these proteins causes them to denature, or break down into other substances, which in turn changes the structure and texture of meat, usually reducing its toughness... |
why do advertisers(?) even bother posting ridiculous ads on the internet? | There is a sucker born every minute. | [
"Unwanted advertising can also harm the advertisers themselves if users become annoyed by the ads. Irritated users might make a conscious effort to avoid the goods and services of firms which are using annoying \"pop-up\" ads which block the Web content the user is trying to view. For users not interested in making... |
Is there any known correlation between the European witch hunts of the 16th-17th centuries, and the psychedelic properties of Ergot of Rye? | This is not a ridiculous question.
It is the central theme of Mary Kilbourne Matossian's book *Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History* published in 1989 by Yale - although psychedelic properties are only a fraction of the symptoms Matossian attributes to ergot (ergot is a mold which forms on rye). In her book she attempts to account for, well, frankly every major shift in European (and some American) social and economic activity from the late middle ages to 1800 including witch persecution. And for that reason she suffered an absolute demolition by social and agricultural historians as well as by biologists. This isn't to say that she doesn't raise interest corollaries of historical data which are suggestive - the problem is that the data is treated superficially, without historical context (for example she is dismissive of social-political analysis in the chapter *Witch Persecution in Early Modern Europe*), and without data depth or comparison, all of which lead scientists to question her claims to 'scientific methodology' and historians to question whether she actually knew much about history at all. In her own words from the introduction,
> "I have made judgements on the basis of a little information about a lot of people."
Now, lest this seem entirely dismissive, I'll raise a point specific to your question. Matossian attempts to correlate the outbreaks of witch trials with the rye growing areas of (see her map p.72) period, and imputes based on generalities of climate that there *must* have been conditions for the growth of ergot mycotoxin and therefore this explains why witch persecution arose where it did. The argument is not buttressed whatsoever with details from witchcraft trials which could support the pathology of ergot poisoning. In fact, Matossian tries to build a case for ergot's relationship to witch persecution in 17th c Essex, England and ends up in a mess of logic. After stating that there are 'traces' of 'physical constrictures', 'fits' and 'gangrene' in court records which match the symptoms of ergot poisoning, Matossian then undercuts herself by suggestion everything is symptomatic of ergot:
> "Most of the other reported symptoms could have been symptoms of ergostism, but they neither proved nor disproved the case in themselves [...] the symptoms included lameness; loss of sight, hearing, and speech; nausea; fainting; making animal noises, hallucinations; suicide, and sudden death."
Here she refers selectively to two minor secondary works only, out of context, and not to the primary source materials. (Furthermore there is no bibliography and no reference at all to key works in with persecution literature!) Not finding conclusive evidence in the attribution of every symptom ever to ergot in her case study geographic area, Essex, nonetheless Matossian marches forward drawing from outside:
> "We have details of three case studies of bewitchment in England, none of which, unfortunately, occurred in Essex."
Here then is the crux of truly poor historical methodology: building a theory and then finding evidence to fit it. And so it goes with the problem of attempting to impute explanation into the historical record through a material scientific explanation without the careful work ingof data.
Historians (including scientists) have given a lot of thought to ergot's presence in the records, and we do find some moments where it seems that it is indisputably present: most memorably in my field are the chronic outbreaks in early 11th century Aquitaine where the monk Adémar tells us that sufferers of ergot poisoning, of *sacer ignis*, had visions of heaven and hell. *Sacer ignis* has a clear epidemiology in certain records in continental Europe, and could provide explanatory power in *some* localized cases over the centuries, much as the plague can more broadly, however, for Matossian's central study of witchcraft in England, the case falls flat:
> "Her attempts to establish the presence of extensive ergot infection in Britain, which alone among European states has no indigenous name for that infection, and where documented outbreaks of ergotism are almost nonexistent, make unconvincing reading. The evidence of Erasmus Darwin (1791) that ergot was a "disease affecting rye in France, and sometimes in moist seasons' is more impressive: he needed to explain ergot to his British readers. It was not an explanation that was needed elsewhere in Europe, where the abortifaciet effects of ergot, both human and veterinary, were widely known to the common people by the mid-eighteenth century.
>
> "Similarly, Matossian boldly claims rye as the staple of the English poor, ignoring significant regional variations in the consumption of different cereals and pulses, and without any attempt to match regional diets with regional mortalities." [*Review, Anne Hardy, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter, 1991), pp. 509-513*]
The issue remains one of speculation with very thin foundation. There have been some inconclusive papers published in the last twenty years covering witch persecution and ergot poisoning in Scotland, Norway, and colonial America. The Norwegian witch trials of the Sámi in Finnmark ['learning' witchcraft by *consuming it*](_URL_0_) is to me the most suggestive and convincing because the author connects suspect rye and the manifestation of symptoms through witchcraft trial testimony. But no others I am aware of present evidence of connection other than 'rye was eaten in areas where there were witch trials, and some people claim symptoms that can be read as ergot', which reflects the challenge that "correlation does not equal causation." Moreover, it is clear that in the history of early modern judicial torture that confessions of epic psychedelic proportions can be obtained without moldy bread explaining it away. | [
"Upon publication, Ginzburg's hypothesis in \"The Night Battles\" received mixed reviews. Some scholars found his theories tantalizing, while others expressed far greater scepticism. In ensuing decades, his work was a far greater influence on scholarship in continental Europe than in the United Kingdom or United St... |
How and why were Biblical names changed into their Anglicized versions? | There are a couple interrelating reasons here. No one specifically went out to change the names, they just changed. So there's no "who" or "why". To organize the reasons into a list:
1. English has changed since it loaned biblical names in
* Hebrew has changed since names were borrowed from Hebrew to other languages
* Changes took place to adapt names to other languages in between Hebrew and English
So to start with #1, English has changed. All words in English have been subject to numerous sound changes over time. Perhaps the most important for that name list is the Great Vowel Shift. This changed several vowel English vowel sounds, and is a large part of what makes English spelling confusing. Before this vowel shift, the initial "a" in "Abraham" would've been pronounced as in Hebrew, but the Great Vowel Shift changed the English long-A from that sound to the modern English long-A we know and love.
Second, Hebrew has changed since some names were loaned. One example is the name "Samson", which in Hebrew is "Shimshon". The reason for the vowel difference is that Hebrew shifted "a" to "i" in certain contexts. This is also why the Arabic name Maryam and the English name Mary have an A where the name Miriam doesn't--Miriam was once Mariam, but Hebrew changed since those names were loaned into Greek. One example from your list is from "Jonathan". At one point, the letter tav in certain environments was pronounced "th", just the way B is sometimes V, p/f, k/kh (daled and gimmel also had two sounds at one point). In the time period where the biblical narratives take place, all these letters would've not yet split, but by the time the names were loaned (and when the system for writing vowels was fixed) [the letters bgdkpt all had two sounds](_URL_0_) which varied according to phonetic context. Modern Hebrew does this with 3 of them, but some liturgical Hebrew pronunciations have more or less (the Ashkenazi tav/sav being one, the th became s)
Historical transliteration is actually a very important way of knowing ancient Hebrew pronunciations. It can be guessed at, for instance, that 'ayin was pronounced two different ways, just like shin and sin are. This is because in Greek the 'ayin in Ya'akov becomes null, while the 'ayin in Gemorrah becomes a gamma in Greek (which is why it's not 'amorah).
Third, names were adapted for different languages. Greek and Latin have no "sh", so they were approximated with "s". English names are *sometimes* derived or influenced by the Greek or Latin versions of those names. That's why Moshe has an s at the end in English, and why Solomon has that final n. Both of those are endings to make them work with how nouns are declined in Greek. | [
"The 4th-century and 5th-century Latin translations of the Hebrew Bible romanize its proper names. The familiar Biblical names in English are derived from these romanizations. The Vulgate, of the early 5th century, is considered the first direct Latin translation of the Hebrew Bible. Apart from names, another term ... |
Why does James Webb Space Telescope needs to be in L2 lagrangian point? What are the benefits other we don’t worry about losing orbit... | Thermal control. In Low Earth Orbit (LEO), you don't only have to worry about the Sun heating your satellite, but also *Earth itself* reflects 39% of sunlight and emits infrared at the same time. James Webb is designed to observe in infrared, so the instruments themselves have to be kept very cold to reduce thermal noise in the observations. In fact they have designed it for temperatures below -200°C! This would be too hard to maintain if you have visible *and* infrared coming from both sides at times.
The most intuitive answer would say that in L2 Earth blocks most sunlight. This isn't actually true for JWST because it will be placed in a halo orbit with a radius of 800,000 km, so Earth will never be in line between the Sun and the telescope. _URL_0_
Still, the benefit of not having to deal with planetary infrared is already a good improvement. Also the fact that all sunlight is coming from the same direction is good, so you can just put a solar shade to have a permanently cold side. (Not trying to imply that maintaining such a low temperature is going to be easy, but definitely not as hard as in LEO).
Losing orbit is actually still a concern. L2 is an unstable equilibrium point. If the satellite moves away from this point perpendicularly to the Sun-Earth line then the combined forces of the two major bodies would pull it back into L2 (in fact it will be in orbit around that point), but if the movement has a small component that is parallel to the Sun-Earth line then it risks of being pulled into a heliocentric orbit that is no longer dominated by Earth, or falling down into an ellipse coming close to LEO or even crashing against Earth. For that reason it will need thrusters to compensate for perturbations. That said, there isn't much atmospheric drag as in LEO and the Moon is too far away to cause a strong gravitational influence, most of the force it will have to account for is solar radiation pressure which is very small.
| [
"Hubble, meanwhile, has neither the field of view nor the available time to study all interesting objects. Worthwhile targets are often found with ground telescopes, which are cheaper, or with smaller space observatories, which are sometimes expressly designed to cover large areas of the sky. Also, the other three ... |
What would a typical meal have looked like 5000 years ago? | The Archaic people of the American Southwest (the ancestors of what we call the Ancient Puebloans or Anasazi - we do not know what they called themselves) are defined as pre-agricultural. They are dated to roughly 7000 - 1000 BCE. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers who may have traveled about 300 or 400 miles in a year from Texas to Wyoming.
They hunted with [atlatls](_URL_0_) (spear-throwers to help spears go farther and faster) and would have eaten pretty much any of the local fauna: bighorn sheep, deer, smaller game. I am not sure how they cooked it, however.
They also gathered a variety of plants. A large part of their diet (at least in southeast Utah, where I learned about this) consisted of tiny seeds such as [ricegrass](_URL_3_) and [amaranth](_URL_1_). They practiced horticulture, though not agriculture - leaving seeds behind on plants or burying a few seeds nearby when they harvested. This helped ensure that there would again be food there when they returned to that area the next year. Juniper berries and pinyon nuts were also part of the diet.
These people did not make pottery, but wove baskets. Cooking was likely done by heating rocks in the fire, then transferring them into a basket with water and food in it. This would cause the water to boil and cook the food.
The practice of farming corn/maize appears to have reached the area around 1500 BCE, spreading up from Mesoamerica. Beans and squash arrived later. Farming prompted a huge shift in the culture, and villages of pit houses grew to up to 500 people.
The above is based on my notes from a trip I took led by archaeologist [Joe Pachak](_URL_2_) in Grand Gulch, Utah. | [
"The earliest European menus, several of which survive from 1751 onwards, appear to have been for the relatively intimate and informal \"soupers intimes\" (\"intimate suppers\") given by King Louis XV of France at the Château de Choisy for between 31 and 36 guests. Several seem to have been placed on the table, lis... |
Since the distance between earth and moon varies a lot, what is keeping the moon from breaking free from the gravitational pull of the earth? Or either crashing into the earth? | Orbits can be elliptical as well as circular - look up the orbit of Sedna, a large Kuiper Belt object. Orbits are determined by both speed and distance. As an orbiting body gets closer to the gravitational source, it speeds up. This extra speed allows it to go around the planet without crashing into it. Likewise, as an orbiting body moves away from the source of gravity, it slows down, which brings it back. However, the moon is actually moving away by a couple inches a year on average. An interesting point about this is that we live at the perfect time to see solar eclipses. The moon used to be closer, which completely obscured the sun's corona. In the future, it will be too far away for a total solar eclipse to occur. I know that wasn't part of your question, but it seemed fun to add! I hope this helps :) | [
"Currently, the Moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of 4 cm (1.5 inches) per year. In 50 billion years, if the Earth and Moon are not engulfed by the Sun, they will become tidelocked into a larger, stable orbit, with each showing only one face to the other. Thereafter, the tidal action of the Sun will extract ... |
why do vitamins taste so gross and are so large compared to other pills? | I had this conversation with my primary care physician years ago when I had a laugh about how my multi-vitamin stank. If I remember correctly, he said it was mostly due to the B-vitamins (notably thiamine) and the yeast associated with B-vitamins. | [
"Vitamins are classified as either water-soluble or fat-soluble. In humans there are 13 vitamins: 4 fat-soluble (A, D, E, and K) and 9 water-soluble (8 B vitamins and vitamin C). Water-soluble vitamins dissolve easily in water and, in general, are readily excreted from the body, to the degree that urinary output is... |
why do hangovers get worse as we age? | Your body just doesn’t work as well and is less efficient with age. I think it’s somewhere in your mid 20s when you physically peak, and afterwards you are in a perpetual slow decline.
Specifically your liver and kidneys don’t work as well. | [
"BULLET::::- Age: some people experience hangovers as getting worse as one ages. This is thought to be caused by declining supplies of alcohol dehydrogenase, the enzyme involved in metabolizing alcohol. Although it is actually unknown whether hangover symptoms and severity change with age, research shows that drink... |
Why is the useful life of a smoke detector only 10 years? | From the [New York Times](_URL_0_):
Results of a Canadian Study
There has not been much research into problems of aging detectors. But one Canadian study, completed in the early 80's, found that detectors, irrespective of their age, failed at a rate of 3 percent a year, said Richard Bukowski, a manager at the Center for Fire Research, part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md. The probability of failure increases with the age of an electronic component, he said.
Ronald Sisselman, a former official with Pittway, which makes First Alert detectors, is a smoke-detector consultant. He said that, in theory, the electronic components in a smoke detector should last at least 30 years. But a smoke detector could fail at any time, he said, and Pittway recommends changing them every 10 years because that provides a reasonable margin of safety. But he added, ''I don't know of any unit that has failed because of aging.''
Americium-141 is both an alpha and a gamma emitter; it's not unreasonable that the gamma emissions damage the electronic components over time. | [
"The first single-station smoke detector was invented in 1970 and made public the next year. It was an ionization detector powered by a single 9-volt battery. They cost about US$125 and sold at a rate of a few hundred thousand per year. Several technological developments occurred between 1971 and 1976, including th... |
Has alcohol ever been illegal before the prohibition era in America or Europe ? | Both before and after the duration of the Volstead Act, which prohibited alcohol in the entirety of the United States, there have been state governments (the earliest being Maine in 1948) and local governments prohibiting alcohol. At present, there is no statewide prohibition in any state, but some states (Kansas and Tennessee immediately come to mind) require counties to specifically pass laws allowing the sale of alcohol.
The European countries which managed to successfully (success being defined as actually enacting legislation) prohibit alcohol were Finland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. While Finland's prohibition was both enacted and repealed shortly before the same events in the United States, Iceland's prohibition was repealed in 1989 (though it had been watered down over the years) and the Faroe Islands kept theirs until 1992. | [
"Between 1920 and 1933 the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution banned alcohol in the United States. Prohibition proved almost impossible to enforce and resulted in the rise of organized crime, including the modern American Mafia, which identified enormous business opportunities in the manufacturi... |
What is the coldest temperature in the known universe? | The lowest temperature in the Universe is actually [man-made](_URL_0_). The ambient temperature of "empty space" is actually about 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. This is the current temperature of the [cosmic microwave background radiation](_URL_1_), the light left over from the Big Bang. There are some places in space where the temperature can get slightly colder than this, in giant molecular clouds and protostellar cores, for example, but nothing can get nearly as cold as the coldest man-made temperature. | [
"In 1995, using the 15-metre Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope in Chile, astronomers revealed that it is the coldest place in the Universe found so far, besides laboratory-created temperatures. With a temperature of −272 °C, it is only 1 °C warmer than absolute zero (the lowest limit for all temperatures). Even t... |
How does sunscreen work? Is sunburn actually a literal burn, or is that just a colloquialism? | > ...sounds like sunburn is caused by UV light damaging the DNA,
More or less. The damage to DNA is a potential cancer risk, so your cells have feedback cascades that result in programmed cell death in response to UV damage (although, of course, sometimes these safegaurds fail and you still get melanoma).
> is that the same thing that happens when I burn my hand on the stove?
Not really. The UV light can also damage other (non-DNA) molecules, but the DNA damage is the real danger. The heat from a stove causes much greater damage to your tissue.
> In both cases, the burn remains warm to the touch for hours or days....Is that due to an immune or histamine response, or what?
This is due to inflammation, not the burn itself. Your immune system responds to damage and increases blood flow to the area.
> About sunscreen, .... Am I actually dying my skin ultraviolet?
In a nutshell, yes. Look at [this photo](_URL_0_). If our eyes could see UV light, sunscreen would look like paint.
> where does the sunscreen go?...then wouldn't the UV rays penetrate part of my skin or at least get near the DNA in my cells?
Some sloughs off with sweat and dead skin cells, some is absorbed. This is why you have to reapply every few hours.
| [
"Sunscreen, also known as sunblock, is a lotion, spray, gel, foam (such as an expanded foam lotion or whipped lotion), stick or other topical product that absorbs or reflects some of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation and thus helps protect against sunburn. Diligent use of sunscreen can also slow or temporarily p... |
why can i become so cold so fast, but take so long to warm back up? | Because your body needs to burn a specific kind of fat called brown fat. It is called that because it has a lot of mitochondria, the energy factories of cells. Another factor is that your body mostly cares about keeping your core up to 98.6, your skin isn't as important. | [
"BULLET::::- Warmness brings about increase in exuberance and energy level which boost speech and body movements speed while coldness causes quite the reverse symptoms as people with cold Mizaj don't have much energy and are generally slow, they take their time speaking and acting.\n",
"BULLET::::- Staying up for... |
Is there the same concern with overprescribing antivirals as there is with antibiotics? Like the resistance? If so, why have I never heard of it being an issue? | Yes, it occurs with other viruses. Consider the case of herpes simplex ([_URL_2_](_URL_2_)), hepatitis B ([_URL_0_](_URL_0_)), hepatitis C ([_URL_1_](_URL_1_))... Selection pressures create the need for viruses to develop resistance. | [
"Antiviral resistance can be defined by a decreased susceptibility to a drug caused by changes in viral genotypes. In cases of antiviral resistance, drugs have either diminished or no effectiveness against their target virus. The issue inevitably remains a major obstacle to antiviral therapy as it has developed to ... |
Can you deafen an insect? | It is called a tympanum. The membrane can be damaged by a loud noise or mechanically. I once did an experiment related to mate location that required making cricket's deaf by damaging the tympanum. I don't know anything about a specific frequency working on it. | [
"Many insects have good ultrasonic hearing, and most of these are nocturnal insects listening for echolocating bats. These include many groups of moths, beetles, praying mantids and lacewings. Upon hearing a bat, some insects will make evasive manoeuvres to escape being caught. Ultrasonic frequencies trigger a refl... |
how did geese learn they can cross the road and cars will stop for them? | Geese don't give a fuck, they do what they want. | [
"There are many old tracks which were used over the centuries by drovers to take their cattle and geese to market in England. The drovers brought back gorse seed, which they sowed to provide food for their sheep.\n",
"In 1966 Packer appeared in an experiment for the BBC TV history programme, Chronicle to see how ... |
how lighting a fire on a candle pulls so much wax out of your ear. | The simple answer is that they don't do that. All residue that you can see in them are from the candles themselves.
For more info read this: _URL_0_
They don't produce any negative pressure so nothing cat be pulled out and if the did pull things out there would be enough negative pressure to burst your eardrums.
The candles burn the same regardless if you put them in your ear or not and all residue is from the candles.
There is a reson that in medicine you done clean ears with a device similar to a vacuum cleaner but instead push in water, with pressure that your eardrum can survive, in a smaller tube so it can dislodge what is in there
The procurede have a risk and you can get hot melted wax into you ears. | [
"The Spokane Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic conducted a research study in 1996 which concluded that ear candling does not produce negative pressure and was ineffective in removing wax from the ear canal. Several studies have shown that ear candles produce the same residue when burnt without ear insertion and that the... |
what raw materials/ingredients are used to make antidepressants. | The process of synthesizing a medication starts with some commercially available reagent which is acted on in various ways to create the desired molecule.
What that initial reagent depends entirely on the drug in question. For example, citalopram, a widely used antidepressant, can be synthesized out of 5-bromopthalide, [which can be purchased from suppliers](_URL_0_). That reagent is combined with others under specific conditions. Chemical reactions occur. At the end of the process, you end up with citalopram.
It's basically like cooking. You go to the grocery store and buy flour, eggs and sugar, then you come home and combine them in the right way to bake a cake. | [
"Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) are a class of medications that are used primarily as antidepressants. TCAs were discovered in the early 1950s and were marketed later in the decade. They are named after their chemical structure, which contains three rings of atoms. Tetracyclic antidepressants (TeCAs), which conta... |
when things are loading on my computer, why does the status bar often jump quickly to 99% and then stay there for a long time? | The status bar is something that gets updated explicitly. So if the program has to load 100 data files the programmers just map one file to 1% of the loading process. But the 100th file might be way bigger so it may take longer. Or the 99% of the process is the loading of the data (again a linear mapping from data to load to %) and the last % is to unpack them.
So overall it is bad programming of the developers OR something that just can't be timed. Like a download from a server, a version check etc. where the programmers can't know how long it takes in relation to other operations. | [
"Because the loading screen data itself needs to be read from the media, it actually increases the overall loading time. For example, with a ZX Spectrum game, the screen data takes up 6 kilobytes, representing an increase in loading time of about 13% over the same game without a loading screen.\n",
"Buffer overfl... |
Iceland is remote and sparsely populated. Why does it have such a large medieval literary corpus? | Icelandic historian Jón Viðar Sigurðsson gives three reasons for the saga-writing of the Icelandic aristocracy:
* To create and maintain social differences between chieftains (the aristocracy) and the rest of the population.
* To compete socially with other members of the aristocracy. Books were expensive, thus a symbol of power and status. Sigurðsson theorizes that Iceland has such a distinct literary tradition in part due to a lack of other status-seeking options. There were, for instance, no opportunities for glory in warfare in the second half of the 13th century and 14th century.
* Later (late 13th century and 14th century) saga-writing, in particular, was motivated by the desire of the Icelandic aristocracy to maintain/reconnect links with the Nordic countries (Iceland became more isolated during the same period, which was not good for such a peripheral entity, see the collapse of the Nordic settlement in Greenland when ties broke with Norway for example) by tracing the ancestry of Icelandic aristocrats to well-known kings and heroes that the contemporary Nordic kings could also trace their origins to.
See [this source](_URL_1_) and [this source](_URL_0_). | [
"The library thus holds large collections of medieval manuscripts from other countries and regions, including the largest collection of Icelandic manuscripts outside Iceland. Also part of the collection is the oldest known manuscript of the Law Code of Jutland (Jyske Lov), \"Cod Holm C 37\", dated to around 1280. A... |
what is starbucks's value proposition/competitive advantage? and how did that enable it to launch products in stores? | Starbucks no longer has to compete as heavily in the value proposition. They exist in a space where they basically promote "you get what you pay for" to justify paying more. Additionally, when they first arrived they offered something new and unique and they set the trends and so people believed Starbucks was a leader and now they Excel with brand loyalty.
The bigger they for the more they could control pricing of the goods they purchased which then enabled them to gain an even bigger share (like Wal-Mart). This allowed them to have additional product that they were able to easily package and sell elsewhere as another revenue stream. | [
"Large transnational companies have begun to use fair trade commodities in their products. In April 2000, Starbucks began offering fair trade coffee in all of their stores. In 2005, the company promised to purchase ten million pounds of fair trade coffee over the next 18 months. This would account for a quarter of ... |
how can getting a vasectomy not be 100% effective birth control? | Some vas deferens tubes have grown back over time, resulting in fertility and unexpected births. This according to my urologist when I was snipped. Better wrap that thing up, boys! | [
"Many forms of female-controlled contraception rely on suppression of the menstrual cycle using progesterones and/or estrogens. For patients who wish to avoid hormonal medications because of personal medical contraindications such as breast cancer, unacceptable side effects, or personal preference, tubal ligation o... |
Does putting two engines on the same aircraft give it double the thrust? | Yes, thrust will double so long as the engines are far enough apart to avoid interacting with each other. Acceleration, top speed and other proformance indicators will not double and may even decreace due to the added weight and drag of a second engine however. | [
"When two opposing engines of aircraft with four or more engines are inoperative, there is no thrust asymmetry, hence there is no rudder requirement for maintaining steady straight flight; Vs play no role. There may be less power available to maintain flight overall, but the minimum safe control speeds remain the s... |
what allows media outlets to blatantly lie? | To quote Amendment 1 of the Bill of Rights directly:
**Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.**
In short, the media (or the press) has the ability to have free speech, whether it is truth or not. There are slander laws in place, but the media has been around long enough to know when it crosses the line. | [
"BULLET::::- Explanation: Spread of information has become viral today, because of the Internet. This also means that false news or rumors can spread speedily through social networking sites or emails. Being involved in the circulation of incorrect information is unethical. Mails and pop-ups are commonly used to sp... |
Why did the Greeks not adapt/improve the phalanx a la the Romans' maniple? | This question is quite unfair on the Greeks for two reasons. One, their lack of an organised military made it very difficult for them to change the way they fought. Two, they absolutely did improve their phalanx and their battle tactics over time. It would be very wrong to think of Greek heavy infantry tactics as stagnant for centuries - but it's important to contextualise when and where changes happened.
To start with the first point: no Greek city-state had an army. They simply never created anything we would recognise as a professional military, with state pay for professional soldiers, logistical support, facilities, training schools, officer academies, etc. What they had was a militia of citizens called up at need, armed with the weapons they could afford. At best, these ad-hoc armies were supplemented by a few standing units or mercenary contingents (most of which were also temporary, since Greek city-states lacked the financial means to keep such things at their disposal permanently). Their lack of a professional army also prevented the development of a proper military mindset; Greek citizens did not like the idea of being ordered around, and only the Spartans ever seem to have learned to respect the concept of military authority as such.
The result of this is that a Greek city-state couldn't simply ordain that the citizens were henceforth to fight in a particular war. They did not supply their militia with weapons, and therefore relied on whatever people turned up with. Anyone who tried to introduce a new weapon or tactic had to go up against a citizen body protesting that there was nothing wrong with how they'd always done it, that the new way of doing things was just a lot of hard work, etc. In addition, they did not provide their citizens with compensation for time spent training, which meant in practice that they did not train. How much could the effectiveness of an untrained force be improved without any additional training?
The Greek way of war therefore changed very slowly. New ideas were constantly being tried by innovative commanders, but less inspiring leaders could not replicate them; new inventions were being made, but the means or the willingness to adopt them were lacking. For the most part, tactics remained very simple, because an untrained mob couldn't be expected to perform well in more complex scenarios. Most Greek city-states seem to have accepted the fact that a large semi-organised mass of heavy infantry, supplemented by cavalry and light troops, was the most effective form that their untrained citizen levy could take. Several commanders actually found out to their cost that it was a bad idea to try to make the proud free men of Greece work harder at being better soldiers.
Now, to the second point: the Greeks absolutely did improve the phalanx and its use in battle. Obviously, they originally developed this regular rank-and-file formation out of earlier disorganised masses of heavy infantry. There would have been no phalanx without this early effort to create a more serviceable heavy infantry formation. But its development continued. The Spartans famously introduced formation drill at some point in the 5th century BC, allowing them to maintain their formation while moving, and allowing them to perform rudimentary manoeuvres in battle. While this required more training than other Greeks were willing to submit to, other city-states developed the concept of picked troops - small detachments of strong, fit hoplites that could be relied upon to carry out specific tactical missions. In the course of the Classical period, some of these picked troops became standing forces, transforming into the elite core around which the hoplite militia could be built when the call came.
Throughout this period, too, more and more Greeks followed the Spartan lead in introducing uniform battle dress for maximum intimidation. The panoply was constantly being lightened to allow hoplites to operate more flexibly and to increase their endurance. The Spartans constantly expanded their detailed officer hierarchy, allowing for smoother formation evolutions and transmission of orders. Greek armies experimented with the concept of file-closers, who were meant to keep an army from disintegrating from the rear as men were overtaken by terror. They worked ever more closely together with other troop types to increase their versatility and cover their vulnerabilities.
There was experimentation in deployments as well. Early on in the history of the phalanx formation, we already see variations in the number of its ranks as the Greeks tried to work out the best balance between width (a guard against outflanking) and depth (a guard against breakthroughs). As the Classical period wore on, hoplite formations became steadily deeper, as the Greeks worked out that poorly trained men drawn up in deeper formations were more controllable and less likely to break. The very deep phalanx actually allowed the Thebans to defeat the Spartans - despite the latter's advantage in training and capability for manoeuvre - and totally realign the Greek balance of power.
Now, the most spectacular innovation in all of Greek warfare was actually to create something like a hoplite manipular legion, centuries before the Romans conceived of it. The veteran mercenary hoplites of the Ten Thousand, forced to march through inland Anatolia and battle against the hill tribes of the region, grouped their phalanx into blocks of a hundred men so as not to break formation when going uphill, and placed light infantry in the gaps between the blocks in a checkerboard formation. This is *exactly* the manipular setup of the Roman Republican legion and for *exactly* the same reason (if the Roman tradition is right that it was developed to fight the Samnites in their mountainous territory). However, when these hoplites made it back to Greece, they never replicated their revolutionary approach. I'll explain why in a moment.
First, we should consider the most important innovation of all. Allegedly it was the Athenian Iphikrates who first reequipped his spear-armed hoplites with pikes, giving them smaller shields so that their hands would be free to wield them. Modern scholars tend to think he did this to fight in Persian service against the Egyptians, who traditionally fought with long pikes. Only some later authors report this, and we don't know how true the story is. However, this Iphikrates later became the godfather of none other than the future king Philip II of Macedon. Philip, when he came to power, reformed the Macedonian army, turning his light infantry levy into professional, well-drilled pikemen - the force that was to topple the Persian Empire and dominate the battlefields of the Mediterranean for centuries to come. Even the Romans were terrified of the Macedonian pike phalanx. The idea came from the Greeks. Eventually, the Greeks themselves adapted to it; many of the city-states encountered by the Romans had upgraded their levies to the use of the pike, if they could afford to train them.
So why do we have this image of Greek military stagnation? As I said, it's important to be aware of when and where the real changes happened. Sparta was better tactically than the other states, with more thorough infantry organisation and drill - but other Greek states refused to adopt the discipline and training needed to achieve this, and therefore never got to explore the possibilities it offered. Only the Ten Thousand ever exceeded the abilities of the Spartans. There was a very simple reason for this: they were professional mercenaries who fought together for a very long, continuous period.
This is the critical point. All other Greek military developments were gradual, incremental, sometimes regressing and going around in circles. But the Ten Thousand, professional, trained, and battle-hardened, had both the experience and the need to develop their tactical skills. The manipular phalanx they developed was a spectacular innovation, but no ordinary untrained Greek levy could ever adopt it. Even the Spartans, who came closest, did not generally have the long service record required to build the trust, the instinctive reactions, and the discipline to make such tactics work.
| [
"In the 2nd century BC the army of Agron and Teuta is no more represented in phalanxes but in smaller troops, armored well and fast moving. These tactics also used in Roman times were ready for independent operations and so were more effective than earlier phalanxes. These exact tactics were agile for quick and sur... |
Any historians interested in music know about the beginnings of the blues? | Alright then. This is going to take a while. When africans were first shipped to the usa during the slave trade they brought their musical traditions with them. Specifically polyrhythmic music. Drums were banned by the authorities because of their religious and communicative meaning. So africans turned to other instruments like guitars and banjos. They took their polyrhythms and transcribed them into pentatonic stringed structures. This is a root of the blues tradition. However, it would take a while for that style to develop. It really didn't until the early 20th century. Before then the basis was laid down in early black gospel music and work songs. After country blues had become a staple in the deep south (ex. Charlie Patton, Son House White, Robert Johnson) it spread and developed stylistically in ensuing decades. During the major black migrations to the northern cities blues developed a unique sub-genre in texas (John Lee Hooker, Lightnin Hopkins). Cities gave birth to a jazzier up tempo version called jump blues (Ex. Lionel Hampton, Louis Jordan). However, the most significant style of blues to come about was in chicago with chess records at the helm. Greats like Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Water, Etta James, Chuck Berry, and Little Walter all got their starts there. Their style was in general an electrified version of country blues with some jump influence. This movement peaked in the 50s. Blues was still unrecognized by the majority of the west though. Then came the british invasion in the 60s. The british rock groups of the era were heavily influenced by the blues (it was called the british blues boom), and they were responsible for popularizing and making old american blues artists famous in america again. Skip James claimed that the biggest payment he ever received in his life was the check Cream gave him for covering one of his songs. Blues-Rock had been born by combining recovered blues knowledge with the newer rock of the day (which ironically had been heavily influenced by blues in the first place). I could go on, but I'm not a big fan of current blues so I don't have very many good things to say. | [
"Little is known about the exact origin of the music now known as the blues. No specific year can be cited as the origin of the blues, largely because the style evolved over a long period and existed in approaching its modern form before the term \"blues\" was introduced and before the style was thoroughly document... |
how does smoking or drinking coffee affect your digestive system? | I highly recommend against smoking coffee. It's possibly much worse for you than drinking it. | [
"In 1920, German scientists investigated caffeine's effect on the bile duct and small intestines. Max Gerson proposed that coffee enemas had a positive effect on the gastro-intestinal tract. Gerson said that coffee enemas had positive detoxification effects that contributed to the recovering health of his patients.... |
how do scientists know exactly what happens inside of our bodies while we’re alive? | Nazi scientists did a lot of very unethical experiments that would never be allowed. Information was still gained. People dont like to talk about that though | [
"Each stage of death is analyzed independently at the Body Farms to get a better understanding of the decomposition process on the body. Medical practitioners determine which insects or what climate cause human bodies to decompose the quickest, or in which manner they decompose according to differences in temperatu... |
why do we have nerves in our teeth? wouldn't a tooth ache that hinders our ability to eat end up being a disadvantage for survival? | If you have a tooth ache caused by an infection, how would you know if you didn't feel it? that infection would go untreated and become more dangerous. | [
"Physiologically, teeth provide for greater chewing ability. They allow us to masticate food thoroughly, increasing the surface area necessary to allow for the enzymes present in the saliva, as well as in the stomach and intestines, to digest our food. Chewing also allows food to be prepared into small boli that ar... |
why does my 4g phone handle the internet better than my damn home connection? | How many MBPS are you paying for? DSL, Cable, Fiber? | [
"Unlike the One Plus One, which shipped a single model worldwide, the 2 will ship different models per region (like most other manufacturers). As a consequence of this, 4G (LTE) connectivity may not be possible outside the region the phone was bought, due to different LTE standards.\n",
"In reviews, the general f... |
why don't any auto manufacturers make any "baseline" automobiles, which are only what is necessary to put on the road & sell at an extremely low price? | Because such a company would be instantly priced out of the market by preowned cars. There's already a virtually inexhaustible supply of "baseline" cars at every price point imaginable. You can't build new cars for under the two grand you'd pay for a '91 Civic. | [
"According to one survey, more than half of dealership customers would prefer to buy directly from the manufacturer, without any monetary incentives to do so. An analyst report of a direct sales model is estimated to cut the cost of a vehicle by 8.6%. This implies an even greater demand currently exists for a direc... |
Why can we not use airconditioners to heat the house in winter? | You could. The efficient version that is designed for just that purpose is called a [heat pump](_URL_0_). They are widely used. | [
" Modern building codes permit both vented and unvented attics in all climates, if a building is otherwise correctly constructed. However, unoccupied attics should usually be ventilated to reduce the accumulation of heat and moisture that contribute to mold growth and decay of wood rafters and ceiling joists. In co... |
ecosystems in biomes | An ecosystem is a unit comprised of living (biotic) and non-living (abiotic) parts existing in a particular territory, in an ecosystem it's important to consider the flow or matter and energy, like the cycle of water or cycle of phophorous.
A biome is considered in terms of its geographical position, its climate and the predominant vegetation, rather than the flow of energy and relationships between individuals and their environment. [This map](_URL_0_) summarizes the land biomes.
Usually, an ecosystem is smaller in size and complexity when compared to the biome. For example, inside the tropical rainforest biome you can find the ecosystem of tropical rainforest birds and its relationship with tropical rainforest plants, tropical rainforest insects and other. | [
"Ecosystems may be habitats within biomes that form an integrated whole and a dynamically responsive system having both physical and biological complexes. Ecosystem ecology is the science of determining the fluxes of materials (e.g. carbon, phosphorus) between different pools (e.g., tree biomass, soil organic mater... |
What is going on, physiologically, when we get 'the stares'? | What the heck happened in this comment section?! | [
"The psychic staring effect (sometimes called scopaesthesia) is a supposed phenomenon in which humans detect being stared at by extrasensory means. The idea was first explored by psychologist Edward B. Titchener in 1898 after students in his junior classes reported being able to \"feel\" when somebody was looking a... |
why, if i hold it long enough, does the urge to use the bathroom sometimes go away? | Part of what controls your bladder recognizes that you're holding it, so it turns off for a little while as the sensation may be distracting in what could be a dire situation where pissing is really not good for survival. It still makes sure to remind you though, as the bladder continues to inflate.
Source: I actually have no fucking clue. | [
"Inability to access a bathroom when necessary has caused health issues such as urinary tract infections, kidney infections, and digestive problems which can later develop into severe health problems. Inadequate access to the use of a bathroom when required can lead to substantial problems for people who have prost... |
World War One Amphibious Invasions | * [Why did the Allies never attempt an amphibious invasion besides Gallipoli?] (_URL_0_)
Here's an answer I've given for a similar question. As to your question itself, while a landing on the Baltic or North Sea Coast of Germany was considered, it was neither considered 'feasible' nor could it have been carried out. Gallipoli demonstrated just how fraught with risk amphibious operations were, and that was simply landing in the Dardanelles. Landing on the urbanized northern coast of Germany, facing the High Seas Fleet, U-Boats, coastal guns and minefields would have been a very different story.
The closest the Entente (Allied/ & Associated) Powers came to an amphibious operation after the Gallipoli fiasco was Operation Hush, which was to follow up the BEF's Ypres Offensive in 1917; the operation was scrubbed when a break out from the Ypres Salient was not forth coming, and the weather worsened. | [
"The most famous amphibious assault of the war, and of all time, was the Normandy Landings on 6 June 1944, in which British, Canadian, and US forces were landed at Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches in the largest amphibious operation in history.\n",
"The Western Allies of World War II launched the largest... |
How valid is the claim that there were white slaves in the USA post-colonisation? | The short answer is no, there were not white slaves in either the United States or the Caribbean. This notion has developed a little bit out of genuine historical debate, but it is driven mainly by ignorance and by people advancing an agenda. The misconception arises because of the existence of indentured servitude - another form of coercive labour whereby white residents of Britain signed up (not always particularly voluntarily) to work in British colonies as labourers for a fixed period of time, with the promise of land or cash at the end of their term. This was initially the preferred form of coercive labour in the colonies, and it certainly could be brutal. The planter class had considerable control over their servants and brutality was the norm, not the exception; many of the systems and institutions that served to underpin slavery have their initial roots in the practice of indentured labour. I discussed this in [this](_URL_1_) answer that you might find interesting.
As such, there has been some debate in the past as to whether or not indentured servitude could be considered a kind of white slavery. The general consensus is that it is not. However appalling conditions could be for servants, they remained British subjects and members of society; they were not degraded in the complete and dehumanising fashion that African slaves were. Their legal rights were significantly stronger, even if the extent to which they were upheld was patchy, and they did not experience the kind of complete 'social death' of slavery that Orlando Patterson described. Crucially, they remained theoretically free persons who were subject themselves to temporary servitude on the promise of economic gain - slaves were, by definition, held until death or manumission, and if they did gain their freedom, they did not have any kind of material reward waiting for them. Indentured servants on the other hand had the potential not only to rejoin civil society after their term of service, but to establish themselves in it as a person of respect and prominence.
Less clear is the relationship between this practice and slavery, which also sometimes serves to fuel this myth of white slavery. Some have suggested for instance that African slavery grew out of indentured servitude, with the first black slaves being indentured servants on par with white servants. Others, myself included, hold the position that whilst some black individuals may have initially been indentured servants, from the outset Africans were generally held as slaves even if the law had not yet developed to describe and regulate this phenomenon ([this](_URL_0_) related answer may interest you on this point). For some individuals advancing an agenda or misinterpreting history, the notion that African slavery may have grown out of indentured servitude seems to reinforce the idea that white servants were also slaves, but that is not the implication of the idea.
A genuine argument can be made for comparing white indenture to slavery, but the consensus is generally that this is inappropriate and fails to capture the nuanced reality of the situation. There are simply too many significant, fundamental differences between the two practices to consider them one in the same, and even those who make genuine contentions that white indenture is a form of slavery are generally arguing from a broader, comparative perspective on systems of unfree and coercive labour - they are not trying to suggest that white indenture diminishes the experience, significance or severity of black slavery, as populist 'white slavery' advocates often set out to do. | [
"Because South Carolina taxed American Indian slaves at a lesser rate than African slaves as early as 1719, that colony had legislated that \"all such slaves as are not entirely Indian shall be accounted as negro.\" After the legal decision in \"Hudgins v. Wright\" in 1808, Virginia tended to classify persons of mi... |
What happened to the countless bows, arrows, swords, spears and other weapons that were used throughout the centuries? Why aren't they being found every now and then? | Well a lot of them *are* being found all the time. For example [here is a find](_URL_1_) from Scotland a couple months ago, where the construction of a couple of football (soccer) pitches uncovered a 3,000 year old sword, spear, and related material. Then there was [this sword](_URL_0_) that was found last weekend. Such finds are sufficiently common that only ones that are particularly noteworthy for how old or how well preserved they are are likely to show up in the news.
Of course with most metallic objects, their preservation is dependent on local conditions. Iron rusts, and most other materials have some form of rot or oxidation. Wait long enough and most iron arrowheads are likely to end up a smear of iron oxide in the ground. Most bows will turn into mulch given enough time.
That said I do think you are underestimating the old philosophy of reuse - reduce - recycle. A lot of the oldest Christian churches are made out of stones taken from pagan temples. Why quarry new stone, when perfectly good dressed stone was sitting right there? Metal was fairly valuable and was worth scavenging. Not every weapon would be found after a battle, but it's unlikely that the locals wouldn't loot anything that wasn't nailed down. | [
"The bow and arrow are known to have been invented by the end of the Upper Paleolithic. Archery was an important military and hunting skill for over 10,000 year and figures prominently in the mythologies of many cultures.\n",
"The use of bows and arrows by humans for hunting predates recorded history and was comm... |
How were autistic people handled in medieval times? | I responded to a similar question a few months ago, if you're interested:
* [How did people in the Middle Ages deal with Down’s Syndrome and autism?](_URL_0_)
You might also be interested in Irina Metzler's new book, *Fools and Idiots? Intellectual Disability in the Middle Ages.* She's absolutely one of the, if not *the*, leading scholar of disability in the Middle Ages. | [
"The disabled community were a definite part of Medieval society. Disability was not considered an extraordinary quality among the medieval people and therefore were not heavily documented. Disability as a category of impairment was not seen in Medieval language, but rather terms such as \"blynde\", \"dumbe\", and ... |
Math Question on Gambling | This is called ["Martingale"](_URL_0_) betting.
The wikipedia article discusses the mathematics behind it at length, but the most pragmatic answer is that most casinos have bet limits. If the maximum bet at the table is $500, once you lose the $400 bet, you won't be able to bet the next increment. | [
"The mathematics of gambling are a collection of probability applications encountered in games of chance and can be included in game theory. From a mathematical point of view, the games of chance are experiments generating various types of aleatory events, the probability of which can be calculated by using the pro... |
What happened to Irish Slaves sold to Muslim Spain by the Vikings? | Well, shoot, but I think you've hit on my dissertation! The hard part is actually proving that captives from Ireland might actually have ended up as slaves in the Islamic world. Only then can we answer questions about what happened to any who might've ended up there. Like most questions about the early middle ages, it's useful to consider both texts and archaeology.
Texts actually suggest that slaves taken in raids in Ireland might've moved east toward the Baltic, not south toward Spain. The *Life of St Findan* talks about a wealthy young Irishman whose sister was captured in a raid sometime near the beginning of the Viking Age, around 800. Findan went to ransom her, but he got kidnapped for his troubles. He was sold through a chain of traders, before he finally ended up on a ship bound for the North Sea. He escaped on Orkney, at the north end of Britain, which suggests he was heading toward Norway or Denmark.
Around the 860s, commerce in the North Sea and Baltic was booming, and a handful of missionaries went up to preach in the emerging urban centers. The *Life of Ansgar* and the *Life of Rimbert* both talk about how these bishops were almost always in the midst of slave markets, doing their best to redeem Christians but focusing especially on those who had been trained in Latin and had likely been monks, nuns, or priests.
Further east, the 800s was a time when geography was popular among Arabic authors, and all agreed that the Islamic caliphate was accumulating a bumper crop of slaves sold to them by the Viking Rus. If you connect all these stories together, it looks like there was a lot of regional slave trading, both by viking raiders as well as among local inhabitants. But some captives ended up in major commodity markets, where they might be rapidly shipped down into the Islamic world.
Archaeological evidence also supports this impression. Slaves are almost impossible to identify through the archaeological record—you can't tell if a person was chained because s/he was a slave or a criminal, for example—but the exchange networks that made the slave trade are archaeologically visible. Again, these point to a booming trade with the Middle East, as well as continuous trade with Frankish merchants, but little if any evidence points to direct contacts between Scandinavian vikings and Spain.
So what happened to the slaves who arrived in Muslim-controlled territory? Their stories were probably remarkably diverse. Women may have ended up as concubines, or perhaps working in vast textile workshops. Boys could have been castrated and sold as eunuchs, or they could have been left in tact and sent to the mines. If they were older, they may have been sent to work on the massive construction and irrigation projects of the new Abbasid dynasty in Iraq. Some may have been integrated into the army, as servants loyal only to the caliph. There would probably have been very few men shipped south, since raiders usually culled any men who could potentially resist their captors.
In the long term, Islamic law was actually remarkably beneficial for slaves. Slavery was an accepted fact of life in most medieval societies, and all slaves suffered abuse and exploitation. But Islamic law placed restrictions on the abuse a pious master could give, and it offered incentives for freeing slaves and supporting them as your clients. So concubines might become wives, eunuchs trusted stewards, slave-soldiers prestigious generals, and field-hands adopted sons. It's hard to say just how well they integrated with the population, since modern Islamic states prohibit excavating cemeteries, and Spanish archaeology generally lacks the funding to answer these complicated questions of genetics and isotope analysis. | [
"When the Vikings established early Scandinavian Dublin in 841, they began a slave market that would come to sell thralls captured both in Ireland and other countries as distant as Spain, as well as sending Irish slaves as far away as Iceland, where Gaels formed 40% of the founding population, and Anatolia. In 875,... |
If the speed of time is based on velocity, does that equation take into consideration the velocity of earth in relation to the sun and the velocity of the sun in relation to the galactic core, and so on? | Its between a wrong question and a right question, showing a partial understanding, but not a full understanding.
No, as it doesn't have to, the "speed of time" (special relativity) can tell you how fast time is passing **relative** to someone else. So we could work this out and find that someone in deep space who is not orbiting the galaxy or sun would have their clocks tick slower then ours.
There is no such thing as absolute still, and therefore all motion is relative. You don't need to work out the motion of the Earth and Sun because even if you canceled them out you wouldn't be "at rest", you need to be at rest relative to something else, its the same with relativity.
Everything (including all relativistic time dilation effects) is relative to another observer, if one observer is moving quickly and the other slowly, one observer will be experiencing a faster speed of time and one a slower speed of time.
I've probably explained this terribly, I will return later to clarify anything. But the thing to remember is everything is relative, you do not need to calculate due to "absolute rest" because it doesn't exist.
| [
"Again, this is a simplification, based on a hypothetical Earth that orbits at uniform speed around the Sun. The actual speed with which Earth orbits the Sun varies slightly during the year, so the speed with which the Sun seems to move along the ecliptic also varies. For example, the Sun is north of the celestial ... |
why do boys and girls mature at different rates? | males and females have different levels of hormones, which are produced at different times throughout life. Males have much higher levels of testosterone, while females have much higher levels of estrogen and progesterone. These hormones are released at different times, and in varying amounts, and therefore cause different maturation rates. | [
"Though boys face fewer problems upon early puberty than girls, early puberty is not always positive for boys; early sexual maturation in boys can be accompanied by increased aggressiveness due to the surge of hormones that affect them. Because they appear older than their peers, pubescent boys may face increased s... |
why can't companies that post millions (or even billions) of profits pay their staff a little more so there is more money in the economy? | Corporate profits *are* reinvested into the economy. When Apple opens a new store or starts development on new products with their profits, the money starts circulating again. Companies don't just hoard money; they invest it to continue growing their business. | [
"Successful managers and organizations know that in order to maximize profits, it's absolutely imperative to hire and keep the best employees possible. If a business always tries to maximize profit, it will actively try to reduce expenses whenever possible—including employees’ wages. In fact, most companies pay emp... |
A question about centrifuges and angular momentum. | There is no force field. When you are standing on the inside surface of a rotating body your inertia wants you to go off in a straight line and the floor pushes back on you causing you to go around in a circle with it, simulating gravity. If you do not have the speed matching the walls, you will not feel the simulated gravity. If you could run the opposite direction of the spinning act the exact speed to counter the rotation and jumped, you would not fall back to the ground. Likewise if you are in the air and don't have the inertia which would lead you into the walls, you just float whether in the center, or slightly off center, or anywhere else not touching the walls/floor. | [
"Angular momentum's dependence on position and shape is reflected in its units versus linear momentum: kg⋅m/s, N⋅m⋅s, or J⋅s for angular momentum versus kg⋅m/s or N⋅s for linear momentum. When calculating angular momentum as the product of the moment of inertia times the angular velocity, the angular velocity must ... |
How does probabilty of head, in the case of fair coin toss, following the head is less than 0.5? | Note: I may be misunderstanding the question here.
There are sixteen outcomes for four flips:
TTTT
TTTH
TTHT
TTH**H**
THTT
THTH
TH**H**T
TH**HH**
HTTT
HTTH
HTHT
HTH**H**
H**H**TT
H**H**TH
H**HH**T
H**HHH**
I've marked all the heads which follow heads - there are 12 of them, out of a total of 64 flips (0.1875)
The "trick" is that the first coin in each group can never be a head which follows a head, because it doesn't follow *anything*. The sequence gets reset after each group of four flips.
If you ignore the first flip, that leaves 48 flips, and 12/48 is 0.25 as would be expected.
However, I'm not sure I agree with the wording you've used:
> and compute the relative frequency of heads **on those flips**. Because the coin is fair, Jack of course expects this empirical probability of heads to be equal to the true probability of flipping a heads: 0.5. Shockingly, Jack is wrong.
He's not wrong if he's **only** looking at flips which **follow** a heads.
If he looks at *all* coin tosses, then he will find he is wrong.
| [
"While a run of five heads has a probability of = 0.03125 (a little over 3%), the misunderstanding lies in not realizing that this is the case only before the first coin is tossed. After the first four tosses, the results are no longer unknown, so their probabilities are at that point equal to 1 (100%). The reasoni... |
why the temperature of air change when it's being moved? | It doesn't change temperature when it's moving (like through a fan), but it has a cooling evaporation effect on our skin so we feel that it is cooler but its temperature is the same. | [
"In an air mass moving, vertical movements occur when there is convergence and divergence at different levels of the atmosphere. For example, when we are near the jet stream, winds increase when approaching its most intense region and decreases when it moves away. So there are areas where the air accumulates and mu... |
As someone lactose intolerant, do I get less calories from dairy foods since my body cant properly break it down? | Yes. Lactose intolerant people can't digest lactose in their stomach or first part of the small intestine, but the bacteria in the later part of the digestive system can. Some bacteria break down lactose with lactase, but some also break it down through fermentation. At this point in your digestive system, you don't necessarily absorb all of the nutrients and calories. On top of that, the fermentation of lactose creates the nasty gases and bloated feeling. Your body washes out all of the waste product with water and that's why you can get some nasty poops.
I don't know how many of the calories in milk are from lactose. Maybe someone else can help you with that. But I can say that it would be difficult to get an exact number of calories absorbed. | [
"Lactose is the major sugar found in dairy milk. Lactose intolerance occurs when an individual is deficient in the enzyme lactase, which breaks down the lactose in the intestine. Bloating, cramps, constipation, or diarrhea may result when an individual who is lactose intolerant consumes a dairy product. \n",
"A d... |
why do people say the middle east will go back to nothing once their oil runs out? | The reference is to those countries that did *not* have great empires in recent centuries. Saudi Arabia, for example, was just an impoverished desert (and not even a unified country) before petroleum. It has not taken advantage of this burst of wealth to build many other capabilities, so one sees little reason to forecast greatness post-petroleum.
Also, the climate was different (less dry) in these places 1000+ years ago, so they had a stronger agricultural base.
Also, world trade used to be slower, so these countries did not have to compete with enormously powerful global players as they may in the future. | [
"Following a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on 16 July, Secretary-General Amr Moussa declared that \"The Middle East process is dead\" and that \"The only way to revive the peace process is to take it back to the\n",
"The need for an open fuel standard could not be any clearer as we have seen t... |
Smallpox and the destruction of the Native American population in 1520. Did Leif Erikson bring Smallpox to N.America and kill off 90-95% of Native Americans? | There doesn't appear to have been any significant population decline in eastern North America around the time the Norse arrive (circa 1000 CE). In fact, this was a time of considerable population growth as maize-based agriculture was rapidly spreading east at this time. The Norse themselves didn't have the same disease load as mainland Europeans further south (Iceland didn't get measles until the 1200s, for example, well after the Vinland outposts in North America were abandoned).
After Columbus, however, there was more direct connect between the Americas and mainland Europe, which allowed for more rapid exchange of diseases. There were many different epidemic diseases (not all of them from Europe) that tore through the Americas at this time. Diseases weren't the only factor at play here - and war, slave raiding, forced labor camps, droughts, etc. all contributed to compromising the immune systems of large populations which in turn allowed the epidemics to spread. The 90% figure comes specifically from long-term colonial census data from Mexico and reflects deaths from all causes. Whether all populations suffered similarly is debatable - some places weren't hit as badly, others were actually hit worse. /u/anthropology_nerd has a great post about this [here](_URL_0_).
> allowing the English and other nations to dominate when landing later.
In New England, there's definitely some truth to this. When Europeans first arrived in southern New England in the 1500s it was was rather densely populated - so much so that the French thought it best to turn their attention further north. An unidentified epidemic struck the eastern North America, from New England to Virginia, between 1616-1618. The people of eastern Massachusetts were hardest hit, with some villages being completely wiped out. However, fewer people died the further west the disease went (the Pequot in western Connecticut were barely affected and further afield in Virginia, reports of deaths from this epidemic are few and far between). Because of this disparity, the Wampanoag Confederacy in eastern Massachusetts allied with the newly arrived English colonists in 1620 because they were concerned that their western neighbors would take advantage of their current weakened state. This gave the Plymouth colonists a foothold in New England. In the 1630s, the first smallpox epidemic struck the area, doing further damage to local populations. The pious colonists viewed the various diseases sweeping over the land as a sign of that the continent was their divine inheritance. | [
"Chicken pox and measles, endemic but rarely fatal among Europeans (long after being introduced from Asia), often proved deadly to Native Americans. Smallpox epidemics often immediately followed European exploration and sometimes destroyed entire village populations. While precise figures are difficult to determine... |
How did Europeans and Eskimo people deal with Vitamin D deficiency? | Organ meat. Let me refer you to [this 2004 article from Discover Magazine](_URL_0_). In short, seal oil and liver (of various species) contains enough vitamins D and C for survival. Kelp is also rich in Vitamin C and wards off scurvy. That's important, because tundra doesn't support much. | [
"Some archaeologists attribute this to the cultural shortcomings that prevented people from settling down in polar regions. However, it is also likely that the inherent limitations to produce adequate amounts of vitamin D in these areas was the cause of the lack of human settlement. Away from the coastlines it was ... |
my little brothers math homework. | 1. fill the 4L
2. pour the 4L into the 7L
3. fill the 4L
4. Pour the 4L into the 7L, so that you have 1L left in the 4L
5. Empty the 7L
6. Pour the 1L in the 4L-bucket into the 7L
7. Fill the 4L bucket.
8. pour the water from the 4L bucket into the 7L | [
"The Carnegie Mellon Cognitive Tutor has attempted to raise students' math test scores in high school and middle-school classrooms, and their Algebra course was designated one of five exemplary curricula for K-12 mathematics educated by the US Department of Education.\n",
"The curriculum used in grades K–3 (and e... |
How could people survive wounds during the Middle Ages, given the lack of antiseptic? | The short answer is that they wouldn't, especially if the wound was deep and located on the torso. Without anesthesia and complex knowledge of human anatomy in Europe during the Middle Ages, there would be no way to safely and effectively perform abdominal surgeries until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so those wounds would be fatal unless they were not severe. Even a less severe wound, regardless of location, could become infected if it was not properly sealed (something that early battlefield medicine innovators like Ambroise Pare would later pioneer through cauterization in the 1500s.)
A more complicated answer is that it would depend on the nature of the wound. Some injuries like head wounds could be treated by trephination: drilling a hole in the skull to reduce pressure caused by traumatic head injuries. As you mentioned, amputation would be an option for treating wounds to the limbs, usually whenever there were multiple fractures or damaged flesh that were beyond the abilities of surgeons and physicians to treat at the time. However, many patients who had limbs amputated would still die of infection due to the use of unsanitary surgical tools, dressings, or even sutures made of porous materials. That said, the human immune system is remarkably effective on its own, which is why someone could suffer from an infected wound but recover from it naturally.
In a military context, before the use of gunpowder in combat, wounds from arrows, swords, and bludgeoning weapons would not cause the kinds of injuries we typically associate with modern warfare. A sword wound would be comparatively cleaner than a wound filled with shrapnel from an explosion.
**Further reading**: Richard Gabriel's book *Between Flesh and Steel* is an overview of military medical history, but it speaks more broadly to the treatment of traumatic injuries as well. | [
"During the Middle Ages, treatments for malaria (and other diseases) included blood-letting, inducing vomiting, limb amputations and trepanning. Physicians and surgeons in the period used herbal medicines like belladonna to bring about pain relief in afflicted patients.\n",
"Generally, Medieval physicians attribu... |
How did the British Navy remain dominant for such a long period of time? | An answer to this could literally be a book, and there are many out there on the topic. I would like to suggest a few brief answers for you, and invite further questions if you have them.
* English (and later British) naval administration developed early, and was fairly consistent (in role if not in name) from the time of Samuel Pepys until well into the Napoleonic period, and after. The idea of having a naval administration that gathered under its wing at various points all the details of victualling, supplying ships, building and repairing ships, supplying ordnance, cordage, tackle, and stores, manning, and various other roles was important in naval development. (Note that this doesn't meant that the English/British government controlled all of this individually -- it still contracted with private individuals for many of these services.) Possibly the most important development related to this was having one single Admiralty budget, so that Parliament would have a good idea of the cost of a navy year-over-year.
* A shipbuilding tradition that was quick to innovate. English/British shipbuilders were relatively quick to adopt technological changes from around the North Sea. The French, by contrast, probably had a better academic understanding of seamanship from their universities, and were ahead of their competitors in hydrography and related marine sciences. They did not, however, move as quickly as their English counterparts in adopting innovations such as the wheel (replacing the tiller for steering); my resource has escaped me for the moment, but if memory serves, the French did not install wheels on their ships for almost 100 years after the British had them.
* An established infrastructure for repairing and storing ships over time. The dockyards at Deptford on the Thames were established by around 1500, with a basin being added to the drydock and dockyards in 1517. Deptford fell out of use as traffic increased on the Thames, but companion dockyards at Chatham, Sheerness, and eventually Portsmouth kept up the tradition of having sophisticated repair and building facilities that were ahead of England's and Britain's naval competitors.
* A tradition of seamanship that developed concurrently, and later independently, of the military (army) tradition of the country. Although early English naval organization mirrored that around most of northern Europe, with a soldier as "captain" of a ship and a sailor as "master," the increasing specialization of the marine arts and the change from "land battle at sea" to actual naval warfare meant that the "tarpaulin" or seaman came to command ships, and, eventually, navies. (Compare this to the Spanish example, where the duke of Medina Sidona, the commander of the Armada, had rarely been to sea and suffered debilitating seasickness.) English and British officers went to sea as young boys, and got a practical education in seamanship that was lacking in other countries.
* A store of manpower for ships that was larger as a percentage of population than most Continental countries -- as an island nation that depended on trade, England/Britain had a repository of seamen that could form the core of even large ship companies when they enlisted or were impressed.
* An overall commitment to the Navy that was not present in much of Europe, where armies would be decisive. Britain could not survive as an independent nation without a navy, and has in fact been invaded from overseas several times -- that fact was not lost on Parliament during the wars of the 17th-19th centuries. | [
"The United Kingdom possessed the largest navy in the world for the whole of the ironclad period. The Royal Navy was the second to adopt ironclad warships, and it applied them worldwide in their whole range of roles. In the age of sail, the British strategy for war depended on the Royal Navy mounting a blockade of ... |
Did people actually tear their clothes/rip their beards when in distress? | to provide at least one situation where this is done wearing torn garments is part of a jewish funeral custom that is called [keriah](_URL_0_). of course, the source of this custom is the bible, which you mention in your original post so in this instance, i suppose that creates something of a chicken or the egg argument. | [
"She is best known for an act of self-mutilation to avoid rape by Viking invaders: according to a ninth-century chronicle, she took a razor and cut off her nose in front of the nuns, who followed her example. Their appearance so disgusted the invaders that the women were saved from rape but not from death, as the D... |
How did Lewis and Clark "send things back to Jefferson?" | I am at work and wish I had time for a more lengthy response
I suppose depending on where you are in 'Undaunted Courage' these might be spoilers
As brief as I can make it, following the long winter which the Corps spent camped in a fort near the Mandan villages, the Captains sent their big keelboat back down the Missouri and continued on upriver in a flotilla of canoes and pirogues.
Manning the keelboat were about a dozen picked men from the expedition, including the man who was court-martialled out of the expedition for nearly deserting with his rifle & etc and causing some dissent among the men during that first year of the expedition. The object of the men who paddled the keelboat back towards St Louis was first to survive the trip back through Lakota territory, and then to transport specimens, documents and even a magpie and a prairie dog (plus a confident and now famous letter from Lewis to Jefferson) to either Philadelphia or Washington DC, and in some cases directly to Jefferson's Monticello home
Jefferson was deliriously excited with pretty much all the things which the Corps sent back, sleeping in a buffalo robe, planting various seed and plant specimens in his private garden, and the like
Kee p reading! There's a ton of great info in Undaunted Courage | [
"Clark's Tree is a bronze memorial sculpture in Long Beach, Washington commemorating Lewis and Clark's journey across North America. It sits on a dune above the Pacific Ocean beach at Breakers near where Clark carved a message on a living tree to establish United States precedence of discovery and occupation in wh... |
can someone give me a summary of all the star wars movies, (and any vital information from the novels.) | The story of the first 6 Star Wars movies (all made so far) is the story of the rise and fall of a man named Palpatine. He is a Dark Lord of the Sith, named Darth Sidious, and he begins the first movie (Star Wars Episode I) as a Senator in the Galactic Republic.
**Episode I**
Sidious' plans to cause chaos for the Republic result in economic warfare between the Trade Federation and the Republic. 2 Jedi Knights are sent to resolve the blockade around planet Naboo. They end up on planet Tatooine where they meet Anakin Skywalker, a precocious child who proves to be strong with the Force. Back on Naboo Obi-Wan Kenobi watches as Darth Maul, Sidious' apprentice, kills his master. The blockade is broken after a space & land battle.
**Episode II**
Sidious rises in power in the Senate as the state of emergency with the Trade Federation continues to cause problems. He contracts to have a huge army of clones produced based on the genetic template of Jango Fett, a mercenary. Obi-Wan is promoted to Jedi Master and takes Anakin as his apprentice. The two end up as prisoners along with Princess Amidala of Naboo (and Anakin's secret lover) on planet Genosis. Sidious' new apprentice, Darth Tyranus is working in league with the Trade Federation and the cockroach-like aliens of Genosis to create a droid army to oppose the Republic, and laying plans to make the Death Star - a giant space station capable of destroying a planet. A huge battle ensues and Master Yoda of the Jedi Council declares "begun they have the clone wars".
**Episode III**
Obi-Wan and Anakin are heroes of the Clone Wars, having fought in battles across the Galaxy. As the movie opens they are engaged in battle over Corsucant the Republic capital world. Anakin kills Darth Tyranus. In secret, he and Amidala have married and she has become pregnant. Anakin is denied promotion to Jedi Master. He grows close to Palpatine who slowly corrupts him, and eventually he turns on the Jedi after his mother is killed by Sandpeople on Tatooine and he takes his vengeance on his mother's killers giving in to the Dark Side of the Force. On his return Sidious names him Darth Vader and sends him to the Jedi temple where he slaughters all the Jedi he can including a number of small children. The Senate elevates Palpatine to the position of Emperor, and he gives an order which converts the Clone Army to his personal military, turning them on the non-clone forces of the Republic. Obi-wan pursues Vader to the world of Mustufar where they duel, and Vader has 3 limbs amputated and is badly burned by the heat of nearby lava. Nearly dead, Sidious finds him and has him encased in metal armor that acts as a permanent life support system. Sidious tells Vader that Amidala has died before giving birth. In truth, she has escaped though she is injured, and gives birth to twins - Luke and Leia, before she dies. Leia will be fostered with the royal family of planet Alderaan, and Luke will be fostered on Tatooine under the watchful eye of Obi-Wan.
**Episode IV**
The Republic has become an Empire and many systems have refused to convert, becoming the Rebellion. Plans for the Death Star have leaked and Vader is pursuing them when he intercepts a courier ship being used by Leia over Tatooine. Leia puts the Death Star plans into droid R2D2, who abandons the courier ship with protocol droid C-3P0. They land on Tatooine, are captured by Jawa traders, and sold to Owen, Luke's foster father. R2D2 leaves the Owen farm seeking Obi-Wan, forcing Luke and C-3PO to chase him. In the desert they meet Obi-Wan, who calls himself "Ben Kenobi". Obi-wan tells Luke a heavy edited version of his family history and the history of the Jedi. Eventually Obi-wan, Luke, the 2 droids, and a smuggler named Han Solo with his first mate Chewbacca leave Tatooine to take R2D2 to Alderaan aboard Solo's ship the Millenium Falcon. They arrive moments after the Death Star has destroyed the planet as way of trying to force Leia to divulge the location of the hidden Rebel base. The Falcon is captured by the Death Star, but the heroes manage to avoid detection, rescue Leia, disable the Death Star's tractor beams, and flee. They go to the Rebel Base where the technicians determine there is a fatal flaw in the Death Star's construction, a flaw exploited by Luke as the Death Star has followed a tracking device hidden on the Falcon by Vader right to the Rebel Base. Luke destroys the Death Star in the nick of time, and Vader narrowly escapes with his life.
**Episode V**
The Rebels continue to grow in number as word of the destruction of the Death Star spreads. They are hunted with even more vigor by Vader who eventually locates the base on the ice world of Hoth. Vader invades but the Rebels manage to escape. Solo and Leia fall in love. Luke goes to planet Dagobah to meet Yoda and be trained as a Jedi. Sidious orders Vader to try and turn Luke to the Dark Side. Eventually everyone ends up on planet Bespin where Solo is encased in carbonite and sent to Tatooine with Boba Fett, son of Jango, and then Luke and Vader fight, Vader reveals that he is Luke's father, and discovers that Luke & Leia are brother and sister. In the end the heroes escape on the Falcon and reunite aboard the ships of the Rebel Fleet.
**Episode VI**
Luke engineers a complicated plan to spring Solo from capture on Tatooine then returns to Dagobah to complete his training with Yoda. The Rebels discover the Empire has built a 2nd Death Star, and they plan to assault it before it completes construction. The Emperor goes to the Death Star to personally oversee the work. During the Rebel attack, Vader captures Luke and takes him into the presence of Sidious where both try to convert him to the Dark Side, but they fail. As the Rebels succeed in breaking through the Imperial defense around the Death Star and attack it's central reactor core, Vader finds redemption by killing Sidious, and saving Luke's life - but Vader is badly wounded and dies. Luke escapes the Death Star before it is destroyed, and the heroes reunite a final time as the Galaxy celebrates the death of the Emperor.
**Expanded Universe**
The novels, comic books, videogames, animated TV series, etc. mostly elaborate on these events, narrowing in the focus on a minor character or a barely mentioned moment, or delving into aspects of the backstories of the characters or the galaxy.
A small number of novels were set in the post Episode VI timeline. Solo and Leia marry and have kids. Luke re-founds the Jedi but with more humane principles. Remnants of the Imperial forces continue to struggle against the new Republic founded by Leia and the Rebel leadership. The galaxy is invaded by a hostile race of extremely powerful aliens - and there are hints that Sidious knew of this threat and that in fact all his actions were designed to prepare to fight a war against them, etc.
Disney says that they're prepared to abandon most of what is called the "Expanded Universe" - anything that didn't happen in the 6 movies. The people working on the next series of Star Wars movies which will take place in the timeline after Episode VI do not have to follow any of the material others created to fill in that timeline and it's expected that they'll likely create a whole new storyline instead. | [
"Lucasfilm and Kennedy have stated that the standalone films would be referred to as the \"Star Wars\" anthology series (albeit the word anthology has not been used in any of the titles, instead carrying the promotional \"\"A Star Wars Story\"\" subtitle). Focused on how the Rebels obtained the Death Star plans int... |
What is the purpose of the salt in many anaesthetics? | Many drugs (including the ones you've mentioned) are organic amines. Amines are often oily or low-melting solids that can be difficult to purify (chemically, they are bases). Isolating them in the salt form makes them more likely to be crystalline solids that can be handled more easily (filtered, recrystallized, etc.) The salt form is also likely to be more water-soluble. | [
"Oleic acid as its sodium salt is a major component of soap as an emulsifying agent. It is also used as an emollient. Small amounts of oleic acid are used as an excipient in pharmaceuticals, and it is used as an emulsifying or solubilizing agent in aerosol products.\n",
"In its acid form, saccharin is not water-s... |
H2O | Think of water as a burnt match. Everything that is in a match is flammable, but once the match is lit and done burning, it's no longer flammable. While it is burning it gives off a good deal of energy, and when it is done burning it no longer has enough chemical potential energy to sustain a flame.
Hydrogen is similar to the match in the manner that it is very willing to give off it's chemical potential energy in the right conditions. When it does so, it combines with oxygen rather spectacularly and makes water. In very simplistic terms, water is already burnt hydrogen. | [
"H is a product of some types of anaerobic metabolism and is produced by several microorganisms, usually via reactions catalyzed by iron- or nickel-containing enzymes called hydrogenases. These enzymes catalyze the reversible redox reaction between H and its component two protons and two electrons. Creation of hydr... |
If A Railgun Fired in Space, Would There Be Recoil? | Yes, there would be recoil, by conservation of momentum. | [
"The rails need to withstand enormous repulsive forces during shooting, and these forces will tend to push them apart and away from the projectile. As rail/projectile clearances increase, arcing develops, which causes rapid vaporization and extensive damage to the rail surfaces and the insulator surfaces. This limi... |
Discrepancy between galactic year and age of universe? | I'm not sure what your question is here. If we naively assume that the entire universe popped into existence, as is, 13.8 billion years ago, then we'd have travelled around the galaxy about 55 times. But that didn't happen. Things to time to cool down, coalesce, and form into the structures that we see today, so we haven't been around the galactic center 55 times yet. It's some number less than that. | [
"The galactic year, GY, is the time it takes the solar system to revolve once around the galactic core, approximately 250 million years (megaannum or \"Ma\"). It is a convenient unit for long-term measurements. For example, oceans appeared on Earth after 4 GY, life is detectable at 5 GY, and multicellular organisms... |
Did Napoleon Make a Largely Positive or Negative Impact on History? | I've written about this several times [here](_URL_1_) and [here](_URL_0_). If you have questions, I'll certainly follow up as you wish. | [
"Napoleon's biggest influence in the military sphere was in the conduct of warfare. Weapons and technology remained largely static through the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras, but 18th-century operational strategy underwent massive restructuring. Sieges became infrequent to the point of near-irrelevance, a new em... |
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