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Did free African Americans who colonized Liberia practice slavery there? I can't find any hard sources for this... | They did practice slavery.
There was a definite hierarchy of families in Liberia, with the first 300 families or so forming the topmost level of society, which more or less socially emulated the antebellum South "complete with top hats and morning coats and masonic lodges. They built houses with pillared porches, gabled roofs, and dormer windows resembling the nineteenth-century architectural styles of Georgia, Maryland, and the Carolinas." (Martin Meredith. The Fate Of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence. New York: Public Affairs, 2011. Page 545).
Below them, came any of the various other former-slave families that came to Liberia after emancipation. And lowest of them, were the native Liberians, though some of the natives did manage to, marginally, improve their position by becoming "country boys" or "hinterlanders" who were able to improve their social standing by being recognized and patronized by one of the Americo-Liberian families. It was these "uplifted" natives that supplied the vast majority of the bureaucratic and clerical workforce for the Liberian government. All the others were mostly ignored or utterly exploited.
To again quote Meredith: "Just like the white settlers in Africa, the Americo-Liberians constructed a colonial system subjugating the indigenous population to rigid control and concentrating wealth and privilege in their own hands. Despite their origins as descendants of slaves from the Deep South, they regarded black Liberians as an inferior race, fit only for exploitation." (pp 545-46) And yes, this did involve slaves. "In 1931...an international commission found senior government officials guilty of involvement in organized slavery." (p 546). | [
"Later in Liberia, these African Americans integrated 5,000 liberated Africans called Congos (former slaves from the Congo Basin, who were freed by British and Americans from slave ships after the prohibition of the African slave trade) and 500 Barbadian immigrants into the hegemony. Americo-Liberians rarely interm... |
Were there any leisure games that Roman legions would play during off-time? | Dice gambling was an extremely popular Roman pastime. Numerous murals of it being played have been found in Pompey, such as this one: _URL_1_
And contemprary dice have been found in archaeological sites across the empire: _URL_0_
Dice is a simple game thats pieces (a pair of dice and of course, a cup) are easily transported, and so it was popular in the military for obvious reasons. | [
"In the Roman Republic of the 1st century, gladiatorial games were one of the more popular forms of entertainment. In order to supply gladiators for the contests, several training schools, or \"ludi\", were established throughout Italy. In these schools, prisoners of war and condemned criminals—who were considered ... |
If you were able to heat up a small portion of the atmosphere to a temperature above the flash point for Nitrogen, would it catch the entire atmosphere on fire? | Just for the record, the flash point of a substance isn't the temperature at which it burns, it's the temperature at which it produces enough vapor for the vapor to burn. So it really only makes sense for substances that are a) flammable in the first place and b) not already a gas. | [
"Because of energy limitations, oxygen and nitrogen do not react at ambient temperatures. But at high temperatures, they undergo an endothermic reaction producing various oxides of nitrogen. Such temperatures arise inside an internal combustion engine or a power station boiler, during the combustion of a mixture of... |
If you put all the popcorn kernels that were leftover from a popped bag of popcorn, into the microwave, would they pop into popcorn, or burn? | they will pop. sometimes i empty the bag of successfully popped kernels and then put the bag back in for another 30 seconds and wait till i hear most of the remaining kernels pops. i know. im a badass cuz it says not too on the instructions... | [
"BULLET::::- A popcorn bag is a specially designed, microwaveable bag that contains popcorn, along with oil, spices and seasoning. The bag is typically partially folded when it is placed in a microwave oven, and inflates as a result of steam pressure from the heated kernels. The earliest patent for the popcorn bag,... |
- why do the bubble in guinness look like they’re going down? | Actually they do go down. The bubbles in the center of the glass move up, creating a flow of the beer sort of like a hurricane. It’s shaped like a donut and the bubbles on the outside are pulled down and then into the center where they rise and form that awesome creamy beer head. | [
"Bubble is awoken by a newspaper which features an advert for a funfair. Bubble is intrigued and seems eager; but Squeek would rather work. However, Squeek quickly changes his mind when he sees a shining three-tone horn for grand prize. They can't get knock the coconut down, which is how they will get the horn. Unt... |
i'm watching a live broadcast of the 'state of the union' speech by president obama. as an englishman, i'm not sure who he is addressing and what the purpose of the speech is? | The State of the Union (SOTU) is a requirement of the Constitution, which says that the President:
*...shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient...*
The exact form isn't specified, but it's been as an annual speech to Congress in joint session for most of US history.
The audience is the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Justices of the Supreme Court, and a number of invited dignitaries and guests.
The general opinion in the US is that it's interesting, but it's also seen as "pie in the sky" stuff- what the President would do if he had all the authority he needed and no opposition. It gives a good idea of the President's view of the country's current status, and his agenda for the next year.
It's also seen as a chance by both major parties to get in some serious axe-grinding. There will be endless dribbling by various talking heads about what was and wasn't important, who scored what points and so on.
| [
"At some time during the first two months of each session, the President customarily delivers the State of the Union Address, a speech in which he assesses the situation of the country and outlines his legislative proposals for the congressional session. The speech is modeled on the Speech from the Throne given by ... |
How big or small a role did the Soviet heavy tanks such as the IS-2 or KV-1 play in the Eastern Front? How did they compare to the German Tiger-1 and Tiger-2? | The truth is that the KV-1 and the IS-2 were superb tanks for the time but they had obvious drawbacks. Your question is about how big or how small a role they had on the Eastern Front.
Well, frankly, the only real answer to this is that they didn't have much of a role at all, mostly because the Soviets had the T-34 and T-34-85, which did most of the lifting in the East, both of the tanks you named never got the needed numbers to play more than supporting roles. For several reasons, lets start with the KV-1.
The KV-1 was a very tough tank, it [outclassed](_URL_3_) all of the German tanks and guns at the outset of Operation Barbarossa, with the exception of much heavier, rarer guns. So, why did they play a small role? The T-34 was almost just as [hard to knock out](_URL_0_) than the KV-1, it was cheaper to produce, in both time and raw materials, it was faster and was far more versatile. So, the USSR ended up building around 500 KV-1s and they were mostly produced before the start of fighting on the Eastern Front.
Commanders loved the idea of the KV-1 but they were so clunky and so hard to use that the soldiers hated them in comparison to the T-34, especially [gunners and loaders](_URL_1_). Who had to contend with very poor visibility and ammunition access because of the atrocious turret design. They had a very widely recognized problem with their clutches, drivers would often report that the clutches wouldn't move and would need to be handled by hitting it with a hammer... This gives us a very important clue as to just how clunky these things were. There is evidence that the KV1 stayed in production as long as it did because the Soviet soldiers were very scared of reporting problems with the tank. The stories of the time state that if you wanted to have a hope to not get shot behind a shed by a political commissar, you'd need to be a recognized Hero of the Soviet Union to report a problem. So, it stayed around, it was afterall, a rolling bunker in essence, so it had its uses but the Soviets would have been far better served building more T-34s rather than building KV-1s.
As for comparisons with the Tiger I and II, well, this will be short, the KV-1 was completely outclassed by both of those tanks, they simply weren't comparable, they were worlds apart. By the time the Tigers come around the KV-1s have mostly been replaced or are being replaced with other variants of KVs.
The IS-2 is a much better comparison with the Tigers. The IS-2 outclassed the Panthers easily, it had a better gun, speed and armor. The Tiger I made for an interesting opponent in many respects, the IS-2 had better armor and a better gun than the Tiger I. The gun was better because while the two guns had similar AP properties, the IS-2 had far superior HE capabilities. The IS-2 had better armor, with the Tiger I being able to pierce the frontal armor of the IS-2 at around 600-700 meters while the IS-2 could open up the frontal armor of the Tiger I at around 1000 meters. Since the IS-2 had superior armor, it had a better time against the Tiger I at around 1500 meters, where the Tiger I needed better hits to knock it out. The Tiger I was also heavier and slower than the IS-2 but it did have better optics and far superior rates of fire.
The Germans did not employ a high number of Tiger IIs in the East but the Soviets did encounter them and when they did, the IS-2 proved to be superior to the Tiger II. Why? Because the Germans at the end of the war were finding it harder and harder to produce quality alloys for the welding joints of tank armor and the Tiger II had a lot of them. The Soviets found out that most of their tank guns could shake free the front plates of the Tiger II from the welds if you just hit it twice in a row. The IS-2 was much more mobile and did not have the grave reliability problems of the Tiger II, which was prone to overheating because it had faulty gaskets and seals, which Germany had a hard time producing in the late war, and its drivetrain was meant for much lighter vehicles which made it overburdened... All of which contributed to the sometimes poor performance of the Tiger II because the lack of training the characterises late-war German tank crews amplifies any difficulties that the tank had with maneuverability. Its gun was superior in all aspects to the IS-2s except again for its HE qualities and the armor, when the welds did not give way, was superior as well, though not penetration proof. So, with all the disadvantages I've put down about the Tiger II, why is it so mythical? Its gun, its gun, its gun. It was a beast. It could open up anything the [Allies or Soviets](_URL_2_) could throw at it. Including the IS-2. It could in fact penetrate the frontal plate of an IS-2, which nothing else could do during the war. So, from what we know about the Tiger II, it would have been a very difficult match-up for any of the belligerents in WW2 if it had come up sooner, before the Germans started having industrial material problems or crew training deficiencies.
Hope that answers your questions.
Sources for the Tiger II: You'll have to forgive me but I couldn't find all of them in preview mode. Here they are nonetheless... [Source](_URL_4_) | [
"Soviet armour strength included 4,869 tanks (including 205 KV-1s heavy tank) and 259 SPGs (including 25 SU-152s, 56 SU-122s and 67 SU-76s) Overall a third of the Soviet tanks at Kursk were light tanks, but in some units this proportion was considerably higher. Of the 3,600 tanks in the Central and Voronezh Fronts ... |
why cannot americans born in us territories vote for president? | Quite simply; because we don't vote for president.
We vote for electors, who then, a month later, actually vote for president.
Article 2 section 1 of the US constitution states:
> 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
So there are 538 electors (435 from house, 100 from senate, and the 23rd amendment gives 3 to DC) who vote for president.
Americans in US territories can not vote because they don't live in a state. (A state could theoretically, allow territory citizens to vote in the state election by state law. The constitution says states get to decide how they give out their elector votes.)
It would take a constitutional amendment to allow Puerto Ricans representation. | [
"Historically, over 40 states or territories, including colonies before the Declaration of Independence, have at some time given at least some aliens voting rights in some or all elections. For example, in 1875, the Supreme Court in \"Minor v. Happersett\" noted that \"citizenship has not in all cases been made a c... |
what is athletes foot and why does it hurt? | Tinea (pronounced: tin-ee-uh) is the medical name for a group of related fungal skin infections that affect the skin, nails, or scalp, including athlete's foot, jock itch, and ringworm (despite its name, ringworm is not a worm).
These infections are caued by several types of mold-like fungi called dermatophytes (pronounced: der-mah-tuh-fites) that live on the dead tissues of your skin, hair, and nails.
The signs and symptoms of athlete's foot include itching, burning, rednes, and stinging on the soles of the feet. The skin may flake, peel, blister, or crack.
Athlete's foot doesn't just aggravate athletes; anyone whose feet tend to be damp or sweaty can get this infection. The fungi that cause athlete's foot thrive in warm, moist environments. Athlete's foot is contagious. It's often spread in damp areas, such as public showers or pool areas.
1)Alternate your footwear, particularly running shoes and trainers, so that you wear dry shoes at all times.
2)Avoid borrowing shoes to lower the risk of spreading the infection.
3)Wash towels and bedding frequently.
4)Don't put on socks, before your feet are completely dry. Change your socks. Don't leave them on for extended periods of time. Let those bad boys breath.
5)Wash your feet thoroughly every day, particularly between your toes
| [
"Athlete's foot is a form of dermatophytosis (fungal infection of the skin), caused by dermatophytes, fungi (most of which are mold) which inhabit dead layers of skin and digest keratin. Dermatophytes are anthropophilic, meaning these parasitic fungi prefer human hosts. Athlete's foot is most commonly caused by the... |
how does my laptop charger convert ac electricity into dc power? | There are two main parts to most chargers of this type.
The first one is a transformer. A transformer is basically a donut shaped piece of iron (or a squared off donut) with at least two sets of "windings". Insulated wires coming in from the outlet are wrapped around part of the iron core, forming the "primary windings". Another set of wires is wrapped around the other side of the core, forming the secondary.
The current flowing in the primary windings induces a magnetic field in the core. That magnetic field is carried to the secondary windings, and as it changes it induces a current in the secondary.
By using different numbers of windings between the primary and secondary, you can either increase ("step up") the voltage or decrease ("step down") the voltage that is induced in the secondary.
This simply changes the voltage; it's still AC.
To change from AC to DC a [rectifying bridge](_URL_0_) made of diodes is used. Diodes only allow current to pass one way, so that circuit configuration results in a DC voltage, albeit one with a lot of "ripple".
A capacitor (or several) helps to smooth out that ripple. There might also be a voltage regulator circuit to help hold the output at a steady voltage regardless of the load. | [
"A power supply unit (PSU) converts alternating current (AC) electric power to low-voltage DC power for the internal components of the computer. Laptops are capable of running from a built-in battery, normally for a period of hours.\n",
"A power supply unit (or PSU) converts mains AC to low-voltage regulated DC p... |
Why is the Normal Distribution bell-shaped rather than triangular? | Use dice and the odds of each result
With 1 die, your distribution is linear. Each result is 1 in 6
With 2 dice, your distribution is a triangle. 1 case of 2 (two ones), 2 cases of 3... max of 6 cases of 7...to last 1 case of 12 (two sixes).
With 3 dice, your distribution is more bell-shaped. 1 case of 3 (3 ones), 3 cases of 4 (each case of two ones and a two) 6 cases of 5, etc.
More variables (dice) just makes the odds of getting the highest and lowest possible case more and more rare,while the middle cases are more likely. Roughly. Tending toward the famous bell curve.
Most things in life involve lots of variables. So they are much more likely to yield a bell-shaped distribution (or combination of them) than a triangular one. The extreme ends are extremely rare. The almost extreme ends are also pretty darn rare. A triangular distribution would make those almost extreme ends "more common" than they should be.
Using telekinesis or something ;) to force a triangular distribution onto Yahtzee dice rolls would mean getting a lot more 4 of a kind than you should normally. | [
"In probability and statistics, an elliptical distribution is any member of a broad family of probability distributions that generalize the multivariate normal distribution. Intuitively, in the simplified two and three dimensional case, the joint distribution forms an ellipse and an ellipsoid, respectively, in iso-... |
What made the USSR able to turn the tables on Germany during WWII? | There are a number of factors that lead to the Soviet Union "turning the tables"
The German offensive began to loose steam as it neared Moscow. A combination of harsh winter conditions, stout Russian defense, and infighting between Hitler and his generals led to the floundering German offensive. As the Germans were nearing Moscow, most of the German high command felt that all resources should be transferred to Army group center under Fedor Von Bock who would than strike at Moscow. Hitler however, wanted to divert resources south to attack Kiev since he was confident that the Soviet Union would collapse by mid 1942 at the latest and he wanted to secure the abundant resources in western Russia like Oil, grain, etc... Badly needed reinforcements were also sent to army group north to help take Leningrad. Nobody dare challenge Hitler, especially after the victories at the Munich conference and in France, so the reinforcements were sent to army group south to subjugate the Ukraine. It was not until October that Von Bock got the men he needed and by that time the Soviets had reinforced with troops from Manchuria and Stalin had appointed Zhukov as defender of Moscow, also the roads had turned into mud because of torrential rain. The German generals wanted to retreat in the face of harsh Soviet counter attacks, but Hitler refused, eventually Heinz Guderian disobeyed and began a retreat, which would cost him his job. Even though it looked successful the opening stages of Operation Barborossa were a failure. Only Army Group South got anywhere close to completing its objectives, the center group couldn't capture Moscow and the Northern group was unable to capture Leningrad. So the Germans weren't in nearly as good a situation as it would have appeared.
On the Soviet side Stalin took a step back from his overbearing ways (the opposite of what Hitler did) he allowed his generals more freedom and began to ease off his troops saying that "persuasion, not violence should be used to motivate the troops". The Soviets also got over the initial shock of the attack and began to reorganize themselves, there armament factories that had been moved to Siberia began to rapidly produce arms, vehicles, etc. at a far greater rate than the Germans could, they also were able to call upon more reinforcements, the Germans suffered horrendous losses in the Polish, French, and opening stages of Barbarossa and these losses were getting harder to replace. The Germans had suffered 213,000 casualties by July of 1941 and by the start of August 10% of the invasion force was dead or wounded. The Soviets also had huge advantges in resources like Oil and were able to focus nearly all efforts on the Eastern Front where as the Germans had to divert men to partisan operations and to other fronts like North Africa.
Sources:
The Third Reich at War by: Richard J. Evans
The Second World War by: John Keegan | [
"BULLET::::- Ultra intelligence fully revealed the preparations for Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR. Although this information was passed to the Soviet government, Stalin refused to believe it. The information did, however, help British planning, knowing that substantial German forces were to ... |
When did the idea of an "Aryan" white race take hold in racist groups and societies? | Racial theories that divided the European "race" into several "sub-races" became very prominent in anthropological communities in the early 20th century, esp. in the interwar years. Nazi Aryanism is itself an offshoot of Nordicism which was developed in the United States based on racial typologies like those of William Z. Ripley (_The Races of Europe_, 1899; Ripley was _not_ actually a huge racist, as an aside, but his "tripartite" racial theory got transformed by others who were), and the Nordicism of Madison Grant (_The Passing of the Great Race_, 1916; Grant _was_ a huge racist, and interpreted Ripley's typology in very harsh terms).
There is a longer history of racial theorizing (going back to around the 19th century — in Victorian anthropology, racial theories were all the rage), but the specific separation out of a specific Nordic/Aryan/Teutonic race largely begins with the authors mentioned above. The key features of this approach to race is that it subdivides "whiteness" up rather finely, notably excluding Slavs, Irish, Jews, and (in Grant's case) those in southern Europe (i.e. Italians) from the category of "valuable" Europeans. It is a typology that was popular with European racists, as well as Northeastern Americans during periods of large amounts of immigration from southern/eastern Europe. In the USA it fell out of favor after World War I and was replaced by a more "bi-color" racial typology (i.e., white vs. black, though also "yellow," "brown," and "red" in some more elaborate taxonomies, like that of Lothrop Stoddard), to the point of almost becoming incomprehensible to many Americans (i.e. the confusion over why Irish were considered a different "race").
Matthew Pratt Guterl's _The Color of Race in America_ (Harvard University Press, 2001), does a nice job of going over the American context of these racial theories. Jonathan Spiro's _Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant_ (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) goes into a lot of details on the formation and export of Nordicism. Robert Proctor's _Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis_ (Harvard University Press, 1990), describes the integration of these theories into the German context (where they get changed slightly), specifically with the aid of German academics and doctors. | [
"In the 1850s Arthur de Gobineau supposed that \"Aryan\" corresponded to the suggested prehistoric Indo-European culture (1853–1855, \"Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races\"). Further, de Gobineau believed that there were three basic races – white, yellow and black – and that everything else was caused by rac... |
Why does wood turn "grey" after being outside long enough? | I would think it has to do with UV radiation exposition over time. Wood is basically dead cells, fibers with old protein storage that used to make them rough when alive. I think the degradation of whatever's left inside on the cells by UV might cause that effect. I assume that because it's an external occurrence, the most internal wood parts tend to stay intact, protected from the sun. If you scrape the gray areas, you might see. | [
"The timber is in demand for panelling, turnery, musical instruments, and other specialty work, (carvings, dishes, and boxes for tourists). The staining of the black heartwood is caused by fungus, and makes the timber markings particularly attractive.\n",
"The mottled white pockets and bleaching effect seen in sp... |
Why did Claudius invade Britain? | The British islands had been known as a rich source of tin for centuries before Claudius invaded. Since the early days of western Greek colonialism, tin which originated in Britain was traded in continental Europe where it served as the primary ingredient in producing bronze for tools and weapons. This probably does not entirely account for Claudius' decision to invade Britain, but it almost certainly was a factor.
Another reason, perhaps even more significant than the above, was to live up to his forbears. Julius Caesar had also attempted a brief invasion of Britain, and was the first Roman to land soldiers there and establish ties with the natives. After Caesar, none of his descendants (the Julio-Claudian emperors) had managed to accomplish what he did. Claudius' nephew, the former emperor Caligula, supposedly attempted an invasion of Britain, but this was aborted. It has even been suggested that the whole thing was a hoax and a product of Caligula's disturbed mind.
Claudius, coming to power after Caligula's assassination, was the black sheep of his family. He was lame and had a stutter. He actually turned out to be one of the more intelligent and efficient emperors, but he had to work hard to prove himself along the way. A significant result of the invasion of Britain would have been the clear statement that he was not only just as competent, but more competent, than his predecessors. This was important because it could have very well been the difference between life and death. The precedent had already been set that the praetorian guard could dispatch an emperor and install their own in his place if they thought he was not worthy to rule. | [
"We learn from Suetonius that Claudius was the first Roman commander to invade Britain since Julius Caesar a century earlier. Cassius Dio gives a more detailed account of this. He also went farther than Caesar, and made Britain subject to Roman rule. Caesar had \"conquered\" Britain, but left the Britons alone to r... |
Pre-Columbian American info? | I recommend Archaeology on the Great Plains. Edited by W. Raymond Wood. Maps by E. Stanley Wood. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998. This is a a little bit dated but it is a solid, comprehensive culture history of the plains broken down into sub-regions. If you would like to read a review, [here](_URL_0_) is one. | [
"The pre Columbian collection groups objects from the most significant zones of Mesoamerica especially from the Mexico’s plateau, Central America and South America. Most of the pieces of the collection were donated by diplomatic figures and distinguished personalities who travelled to the zone and sometimes took pa... |
why everyone thinks freud is hot shit? | Although he's been pretty well debunked since his life time. The reason you're being made to learn about him is that he was so instrumental in the beginnings of psychiatry. If you continue with the subject you will find an awful lot of the people you have to study wrote *about* his writings. To do psychology without Freud would be like trying to study philosophy without the ancient Greeks. Whether you agree with him or not (most don't) he's the starting point for a whole range of central ideas and debates in the subject. | [
"Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory (and therapy) which regards the unconscious mind, repressed memories and trauma, as the key drivers of behavior, especially deviant behavior. Sigmund Freud talks about how the unconscious desire for pain relates to psychoanalysis in his novel, \"Beyond the Pleasure Principl... |
why do things that scare humans usually makes humans want to know more? | It's a survival trait. By learning more about a potential threat, we can either find out that it is not a threat and that we don't have to worry about it, or we can better assess how to deal with that threat and make it less dangerous.
Even though we know that ghost stories aren't real, that drive to learn more and assess the potential threat still exists. | [
"Humans have adapted to pay attention to surprising and confusing information, because it could make the difference between life and death. (For instance, if a person left the campsite and mysteriously never returned, it would be wise for the others to be on guard for a predator or some other danger.) Understanding... |
Can you recommend good books about history and rules of heraldry? Particularily Middle Ages Europe. | It's an incredibly complex subject with its own technical jargon and obscure rules. From an English historiographical perspective the study of heraldry remained a largely antiquarian and professional pursuit until Maurice Keen turned his attention to the subject.
Military insignia are ancient (I can't give a precise date). According to Maurice Keen heraldry developed in response to the requirements of medieval warfare and armour (which covered the face and features of the individual in the melee, particularly in the tournament, where it was essential to know who one had unhorsed and thus who you might be taking prisoner) thus while before painted shields may have held only a decorative purpose they now served a particular function. See Chretien de Troyes' *The Knight of the Cart* for this in action.
Heraldic devices then began to be used on the surcoat, horse trappings, the nobility's seals, and depicted on tombs and effigies. This meant that these symbols took on a more significant aspect. They became hereditary to particular families, with clearly defined rules about how they could be presented. Our earliest examples are restricted to the highest and most powerful families whose power and possessions separated them from the 'ordinary knighthood'. For example, in the early twelfth-century Geoffrey the Fair wore a blue shield about his neck painted with golden lioncels. These same (six) golden lioncels on a blue shield could be found on Geoffrey's tomb in 1152. Geoffrey's bastard son William of Salisbury bore his father's device while his legitimate brother (also William) bore a single lion. This was the origin of the lion as a heraldic symbol of the Angevin family - and then would become part of the heraldic legacy of Normandy and England (and I'm sure other places where the Angevins settled - but do not quote me on that front).
Of course, when we discuss symbolism there is no need for them to have come with a pre-set meaning. Arms could as easily be used to create a new story as remember an old one. Thus the lions of England became incredibly important in the national mythos and the fleur-de-lis of France became representative of French royalists in the Hundred Years War (although this began under Philip IV, d.1314).
Arms were a serious business. The earliest heralds had begun distinct from heraldry. They were messengers and humble officials attached to armies (for example, they are described as waking the warriors before the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212). Heralds' precise purpose in cataloging those present at musters is unclear (as there is no evidence of knights being required to serve, or being paid for service, citing a herald's record as proof). Keen argues that this was ceremonious (creating precedence from those present) rather than practical in intention.
Sir Anthony Wagner (Garter King of Arms - ie. head of the College of Arms - an antiquarian and modern herald) argued that the heralds rise began with their role in the ceremony of the tournament. However, as we move beyond the twelfth- and thirteenth-centuries and into the later Middle Ages the herald came to serve important diplomatic functions. The role of arms also became more important. Heralds and heraldry developed their own unique law of arms. These laws could be used to resolve rare but verifiable incidents when two families bore the same arms. These were settled in the 'Court of Chivalry' (in England at least).
The Court of Chivalry and the profusion of documentation that it produced has not been a traditional topic of study, or typical resource, for historians and up until the Garter Kings of Arms A.R. Wagner and his successor George D. Squibb produced two fascinating examinations centred on the evidence so easily accessible to them at the College of Arms – yet lost to forgotten even by Garter Kings of Arms it would seem. Yet antiquarians had utilised the court records since the eighteenth century seeking to demonstrate the webs of connections and catalogue the disputes of the medieval and early modern elite. Until the work of Wagner and Squibb the Court of Chivalry had been entirely lost to historical research, in a strikingly similar decline to that of the court itself. The court is the only vestige of the civil law court that survived the reforms of the Victorians largely due to ‘the fact it never sat since the early part of the eighteenth century and so attracted no attention in the nineteenth.’ Indeed it was condemned in Parliament and its sittings ordered to cease in 1640. Squibb surmises that had the court been active it would have been subsumed into the secular jurisdictions ‘of all other courts in which the Advocates in Doctors’ Commons had formerly practices to the High Court of Justice created by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act, 1873.’ The College of Arms, which Squibb headed as one of three King of Arms, was founded by a royal charter in 1484 by Richard III the College of Arms was a royal corporation which professionalised the officers of arms under the three Garter Kings of Arms, though the college answers to the Earl Marshal of England. Yet even they, it seems, had forgotten the usage and existence of the Court of Chivalry, it was the Lord Mayor of Manchester, who caused the two century dormancy of the Court to be broken in 1954. Squibb produced his seminal discussion of the early modern cases of the court in 1959 which, in turn, revived interest in the court from medieval historians such as Maurice Keen and M.J. Russell.
Court of Chivalry was a civil court that pursued a mandate under the heading of armorial disputations. The most famous case of the medieval court was that between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir William Grosvenor.
This seminal case set the precedent for the court’s jurisdiction. However, in later periods this was extended well beyond armorial disputes and became the favoured venue, until the Star Chamber usurped this role, of accusations of treason. *ADD MS 35821* (British Library) details the accusations between Baron Thomas Morley and John Montacue, earl of Salisbury, and the ritual offering of proof by the body. While much of this is ritual, the offering of the gage for example, the intentions are startlingly real. The Court of Chivalry had become the last refuge of that perennially noble method of judgement: trial by battle. While in this instance the trial never came to blows, due to the death of one of the parties, it showcases the import which the medieval Court of Chivalry held. Keen argues that the existence and continued practice of the court was, in fact, unconstitutional with Clause 39 of Magna Carta, the right to be judged by one’s peers. The Court did, indeed, operate outside of the supposed rights of men in England, acting with royal authority based on letters patent but without the rights of indictment and jury. Yet the right to be tried according to the common law begs the question of whether the Court of Chivalry remained within the body of the common law or stood distinct from it as the Law of Arms. Squibb and his predecessors are convinced that it does yet Keen makes a compelling case for the Court to have operated not under the common law but under the distinct ‘law of arms’. Philologically this is a legitimate stance to take as the comments of Le Neve, Garter King of Arms, in the margins of *ADD MS 35821*, demonstrate that it was accorded to the law of arms that the two parties accused one another of treason and offered the gage. Moreover, the jurisdiction of the Court was ‘far from exclusive’ with cases of ransom and other ‘purely’ military matters come under the aegis of the constables court. Here again we see the importance of semantics, as Squibb is quite distinct in making the difference between the Constables Court, which could render judgement over a far wider range of disputes than that of the Court of Chivalry which was constricted largely to armorial disputes and those of the leaders of hosts. Here is Keen’s main divergence from Squibb where he correctly assesses Squibb’s divergence as being too narrow and that the distinction between the Constable’s Court and that of the Court of Chivalry was a false one. A famous case in 1386, where a duel was fought between Sir John Anneley and Sir Thomas Caterton took place, though this had expanded to disputes between member of the Order of the Garter by 1399 when Morley and Montacue were making accusations of treason against the realm. The chief distinction is the fact that the rights to court martial were shared between the officers of the army while the right to judge a case in the Court of Chivalry was reserved to the Marshal and Constable of England. This distinction is key for while *ADD MS 35821* makes reference to the ‘law and customs of arms’ action is taken by ‘the constable considering by advice of marshal’.
Anyway, apologies - I'm getting tangential!
Here are some key sources:
[The College-of-Arms](_URL_0_) still exists and has some fascinating info available.
Denholm-Young, N., *History and Heraldry*, Oxford, 1965.
Keen, M., *Chivalry*, London, 1984. | ‘Treason Trials Under the Laws of Arms’, *Transactions of the Royal Historical Society*, v.12 (December, 1962), 85-103. | ‘English Military Experience and the Court of Chivalry: The Case of Grey V. Hastings’, in *Guerre et Société en France, en Angleterre et en Bourgogne XIV-XV siècle*, eds. P. Contamine, C. Diry-Deloison and M. Keen, (1990), 123-142. | 'Chivalry, Heralds and History', in *Knights, Nobles, and Men-at-Arms in the Middle Ages*, London, 1996.
Squibb, G.D., *The High Court of Chivalry: A Study of the Civil Law in England*, Oxford, 1959.
Wagner, A.R., *Heralds and Heraldry in the Middle Ages*, Oxford, 1956.
| [
"The armorial was compiled before 1396 by one Claes Heinenzoon (or Heynen, fl. 1345−1414) who was a herald in the service of the Duke of Guelders and also the creator of the Beyeren Armorial. The book displays some 1,800 coats-of-arms from all over Europe, in color, and is one of the most important sources for medi... |
What other animals besides humans have the ability to dream? And what is the evolutionary benefit by having the ability to dream? Is it necessary for our survival? | Most animals who sleep engage in REM sleep. So by extentsion we assume that they are also dreaming. There are notable exceptions to this, lizards and snakes usually don't have REM sleep and I believe echidnas don't present with REM sleep either, making them the only mammal that does not.
The evolutionary benefit is not clear but sleep walking in cats, dogs and humans is somewhat indicative that dreaming during REM sleep may act as a way of learning or rehearsing normal waking activities. It is also hypothesised that REM sleep helps commit memories to long term memory.
French scientist Michel Jouvet discovered the regions in the brain that lead to muscle atonia during REM sleep. This atonia stops you from acting out your dreams (i.e. sleep walking). He also showed that by ablating these regions in cat's brains they would appear to act out what they were dreaming about. Which lends some credence that REM sleep provides a means to rehearse normal behaviours.
Edit: Additionally the content of human dreams is often seen to incorporate elements from the previous day, either people or situations that were encountered, or perhaps the emotional tone. So people living through stressful events often have dreams about stressful situations. This may or may not lend credence to both the rehearsal or the memory fixing hypotheses.
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
_URL_2_ | [
"Some scientists argue that humans dream for the same reason other amniotes do. From a Darwinian perspective dreams would have to fulfill some kind of biological requirement, provide some benefit for natural selection to take place, or at least have no negative impact on fitness. In 2000 Antti Revonsuo, a professor... |
How are chemical weapons safely disposed of? | There are 2 methods usually used
1. Incineration, where the chemical is basically safely put in a 2000 degree Fahrenheit fire (obviously controlled).
2. Neutralization is what the US uses for bulk dangerous chemicals. It is actually pretty simple. The chemical agent is put into a mix of hot water and sodium hydroxide, which neutralizes it through a neutralization reaction. The difficulty is that you need to extract the chemical agent from the weapon, which means using robotics to reverse engineer the weapon and get the chemical.
Source: A Wikipedia page on the destruction of chemical weapons (Sorry, can't link, I'm on mobile)
| [
"There are two common methods that the United States uses to dispose of chemical warfare agents and weapons. The primary method is incineration, where liquid agents are burned in a furnace of temperatures over . For chemical agents in delivery vessels (i.e. Mortars, Bombs, Artillery shells, etc.), this is a multi-s... |
Why are giant sequoias only seen in one part of the united states? | There are three extant (living) species of sequoia: coastal redwoods, giant sequoias, and the dawn redwood. The dawn redwood lives only in China and is, oddly enough, deciduous. It's been a long time since I've looked at any of the historic range reconstructions, but the sequoias and relatives did have a broader range previously. I don't know the particular reason that they're confined where they are today, but the question of why species ranges are what they are is not always easy to answer. | [
"Giant sequoias grow in well-defined groves in California mixed evergreen forests, along with other old-growth species such as California incense-cedar (\"Calocedrus decurrens\"). Because most of the neighboring trees are also quite large, it can be difficult to appreciate the size of an individual giant sequoia. T... |
late night advertisements and tellyshooing. how do they make enough money? | Advertising is all about the number of viewers on a channel.
After about 11pm the number of viewers drops off significantly.
A super cheaply made infomercial can contract with a network to show their 1 hr infomercial with a few "commercial breaks" for a very low price. Remember the network would otherwise have to fill this airtime with a show that they'd have to pay to broadcast.
Get a some buyers, and they've the infomercial has broken even. A few more and it's profitable. | [
"By securing funding directly from advertisers instead of television networks, “Late Night Republic” appears to be following a non-traditional financing model. Sasseville heavily promotes the Procter & Gamble Pringles Xtreme brand during the show, including an interactive contest sponsored by Pringles where viewers... |
is it possible for an atom to have over 118 protons and be stable? | Apologies for no actual explaination but [Island of Stability](_URL_0_) article on Wikipedia has an interesting take. | [
"The proton has never been observed to decay, and hydrogen-1 is therefore considered a stable isotope. Some grand unified theories proposed in the 1970s predict that proton decay can occur with a half-life between 10 and 10 years. If this prediction is found to be true, then hydrogen-1 (and indeed all nuclei now be... |
why republicans exclude millitary spending from budget cuts | The Republican party believes in having a strong military no matter the cost.
It's much more complicated than that, but that is the *like I am 5* answer. | [
"Economist Paul Krugman summarized as: \"Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government's fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an uns... |
What has happened to the many thousands of items of clothing from the last few centuries? | Old clothes made, for instance , from cotton, linen and other natural fibres were once an important resource for making high-quality paper. (Google: Rag and Bone Man for a description of the collectors, at least in the UK). This does, I suppose, beg the question "whats happened to all the paper?". Mostly burned or rotted I guess. | [
"According to archaeologists and anthropologists, the earliest clothing likely consisted of fur, leather, leaves, or grass that were draped, wrapped, or tied around the body. Knowledge of such clothing remains inferential, since clothing materials deteriorate quickly compared to stone, bone, shell and metal artifac... |
Will I faint instantly if my heart stop beating? | If your heart suddenly stops, your blood stops circulating in your body, you don't have to wait for your blood to run out of oxygen because it doesn't matter if you still have free available oxygen in your blood or inside your red blood cells packed within the hemoglobin, it is stagnant.
However you won't faint instantly. You central nervous system can maintain your consciousness level for around 9 seconds without oxygen, then you faint. This doesn't mean that you are experiencing brain damage from the instant you faint. You faint because it is a defense mechanism of your brain to avoid consuming energetic resources to keep you awake. Around 3 minutes after not receiving oxygen, you start experiencing brain damage.
Another different thing is if you suddenly stop breathing, then your blood will still be circulating and the available oxygen in your blood will be used. | [
"Fainting can be caused by excessive parasympathetic and vagal activity that slows the heart and decreases perfusion of the brain. The sympathetic irritant effect is exploited to counteract these vagal parasympathetic effects and thereby reverse the faint.\n",
"The return of blood to the heart is assisted by the ... |
We have stars orbiting massive black holes, planets orbiting stars, moons orbiting planets. Are there objects orbiting moons? | No examples are known (although some moons exist at the Lagrange points of other moons). For example, Calypso is at the Lagrange point of Tethys and Saturn. | [
"Although traditional usage implies moons orbit a planet, the discovery of planet-sized satellites around brown dwarfs blurs the distinction between planets and moons, due to the low mass of such failed stars. To resolve this confusion, the International Astronomical Union declared, \"Objects with true masses below... |
On the Implications of Imaginary Time: How can time (generally) be visualized if we look at it before the big bang? | Part of this answer does have to do with a philosophy of science that is, I think, fairly reasonably guided by our present scientific understanding.
(nb. only using classical physics to start, we'll get into quantum stuff in a bit)
What we think of as "dynamics" right now, the change of systems over time, is largely due to the rules about information being forbidden to flow 'backwards' in time for any observer.
Suppose, for example, we can describe a particle's position over time as x=vt. We observe the particle at t=0 at x=0, t=1 at x=v, t=2 at x=2t, and so on. Intuitively we think of this graph as 'realizing' over time (for lack of a better phrase); that until t=3, there's no meaning to the question "What *is* the particle's position at t=3?" We instead think "What *will be* the particle's position at t=3, assuming no outside forces intervene in the meantime?"
But it can be argued that the entirety of the particle's position v. time trajectory, its *worldline* is already entirely 'real.' The future positions of the particle are just as fixed as the past positions are. Ie, that all of time, past, present, and future, is one big, unchanging "block." (the very idea it could change is meaningless since time itself is contained within the block)
Time appears to *flow*, for us, because at x=2, t=2 some information carrying 'thing' (say a photon bouncing off the particle) happened that then interacts with us at some other position (say x=2, y=1, t=2+c\*dt ). But our receipt of that information must *always* be later than the event itself because all real information carrying particles must travel at c or slower. The apparent *flow* of time is a byproduct of the laws of physics generated by the *nature* of time and how it is connected to space.
---
So let's think a step forward from there. If space-time is one big block, for which the 'present' moment is just a slice of some hypervolume... then one can rather well think that a graph x vs. t is really very similar to y vs. x. A particle travelling under constant acceleration (while the speed is < < c) can be well described as x = x*_0_* + v*_0_*\*t + 1/*_2_*at^(2), a parabola. That parabola is 'just' as real as y = ax^2 + bx + c is in the y vs. x plot.
And, like y vs x can be plotted for complex values of x, y = ax^2 + bx + c , when x is a complex valued object, still has meaning. However, due to our limitations, physically, plotting y=ax^2 + bx + c is more difficult. We like, often to plot complex numbers using 2 axes, a real and imaginary. We'd need 4 axes in total to plot the real and imaginary parts of both x and y. One common approach is to make two plots, a plot of the real component of y for complex x, and the imaginary component of y for complex x. Each of these is a 3 axis "slice" of the 4 axes needed.
One other way to slice it would be to slice x into real and complex plots, and each plot containing both real and complex y components. And when you slice it this way, you'll see that the plot of purely real x only has a purely real y. It's the parabola we're already familiar with of the standard y vs x plot. The standard 2-d plotting y vs. x is, in fact, a reduced *slice* of the 4-d complex hypervolume.
---
So going back to our universe... our space-time block may be one *slice* of a much larger thing. Here the nomenclature is tricky. I am going to specify *axes* as different from *dimensions*. Each dimension of space-time has *at least* the real axis. But one could well imagine that each space-time dimension has a real and imaginary component. Thus one would need 8 axes in all to describe this meta-object of complex space-time.
Our universe, as we know it, is one 4-axis slice of that space-time. And to buck tradition, I'm going to say it's the slice along purely real x, y, z, and *imaginary* t. Ie, in this meta object there is w,x,y,z, and our universe is the slice Im(w), x,y,z. Then the basic laws of physics (particularly those of relativity) start to fall out of choosing that particular slice.
---
As to the beginning of time, let's look at our parabola y=x^(2). If I ask you... what is x when y < 0... you say... there's no meaning to that question. Or, in light of the above discussion, you recall that our y vs. x graph is really just a *subset* of the 4-axis complex y vs. x hypervolume. Then you say that x can be some whole set of complex numbers, it just can't be purely real.
For whatever reason, Hawking and Hartle worked out a solution to our "universe's equation" that is parabolic as well. All of the real "stuff" in our universe is described with the constraint like the above parabola y=x^(2). As you approach zero from positive t (heading in the negative t direction), you turn back around and venture forth once more into positive t territory. The only way you can explore "negative" t is to allow t to take on imaginary values (or, to use my above nomenclature, to take the real slice of w, rather than the imaginary slice).
But in this scenario, real w, {w,x,y,z} acts like any kind of standard 4-space. There's nothing we'd recognize as "dynamic" in it because it doesn't have any axis that "flows" like time does. At first this may be hard to picture, that a static universe *becomes* a dynamic one... but the notion of *becoming* is a byproduct of being stuck in the dynamic part of the universe to begin with. If space-time is, indeed, one big fixed block, then the subvolume we occupy is just as "static" as the 4-d subvolume where w is real. The difference is that the relationship between the *worldlines* of things we can call particles or objects obeys a different set of rules in our part than in the other part. | [
"In this chapter Hawking talks about why \"real time\" as humans observe and experience it (in contrast to the \"imaginary time\" in the laws of science) seems to have a certain direction, notably from the past towards the future. The things that give time this property are the arrows of time.\n",
"Although time ... |
I am a college freshmen and I want to be a history major. I do not know if I want to teach or maybe work in a museum. What are some suggestions and career choices that are related? Also, any class suggestions? | Check this morning's thread [here](_URL_0_), and all the links in it to previous discussions. | [
"Individuals looking to begin a career in the Collections Management field generally possess a bachelor's degree in history, art history, fine arts, or a field related to museum interests. Many institutions now require a graduate education in museum studies or field relating to the museum's collections in this comp... |
how did science prove sleep paralysis? | By detecting the release of two specific chemicals (GABA and Glycine) and observing their interaction with the body.
Edit: Grammar | [
"Jacobs has argued that Clancy's methodology was flawed, stating that in numerous cases people report they were abducted when fully awake and conscious, and that therefore sleep paralysis is not a tenable hypothesis. Moreover, he has stated that her book was factually incorrect.\n",
"According to some scientists ... |
Why do doctors prescribe antibiotics for viral infections (eg colds)? | The answer is that they shouldn’t unless they know that there is also bacterial infection present. The overprescription of antibiotics is one of the major contributing factors to the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
I couldn’t say why they give them out so easily but I do believe it is becoming less common as the consequences of doing so become clearer. Perhaps it is due to the fact that some patients will complain they aren’t getting proper treatment if the doctor isn’t prescribing them something. I can imagine this being a bigger problem in the US where they are basically businesses. | [
"Antibiotics have no effect against viral infections or against the viruses that cause the common cold. Due to their side effects, antibiotics cause overall harm but are still frequently prescribed. Some of the reasons that antibiotics are so commonly prescribed include people's expectations for them, physicians' d... |
if two mirrors facing each other reflect infinitely, at what point do i stop seeing my reflection repeat itself? | Glass isn't 100% see through and no mirror is 100% reflective. With each reflection less light is reflected back so in the end the image will appear black. | [
"Two or more mirrors aligned exactly parallel and facing each other can give an infinite regress of reflections, called an infinity mirror effect. Some devices use this to generate multiple reflections:\n",
"Reflection in a mirror \"does\" result in a change in chirality, more specifically from a right-handed to ... |
What are the most plausible theories for the beast of Gévaudan retained by modern historians ? | *It's my first real explanation in this sub, I hope I did something correct. If not please advise me.*
I can provide some information, but unfortunately most of my sources will be in French, for obvious reason.
First of all, I'll just put a bit of a background for others. La bête du Gévaudan (la bèstia de Gavaudan in Occitan) was an animal which attacked people between 30^th June 1764 to 19^th June 1767. In the region called [Gévaudan](_URL_0_) an old French area which is now somewhat Lozère. South of France.
Most descriptions are from that era. The beast was seen a lot of time: notably it attacked young boys in 1765 who defended themselves against it, this is the famous Combat de Portefaix (Portefaix's fight).
I'll be quoting the proceedings after it was killed *Flat mouth and fine snout, short ears, grey-red hair crossed by black bands, white mark on the chest. 109 livres (~53,4 kg), size (head to tail) 3 feet (97,44 cm), "opening of the mouth" 7 pouces (18,9 cm)* p. 608-609 of the Chronology by Alain Bonet.
About what it was now.
Connoisseur and hunter agree about a fact: they have never seen any wolf like that. Also the beast was called *Bèstia* (beast) and not *wolf*.
* It cannot be a common wolf (*Canis lupus lupus*) since people knew very well about them.
* The beast killed most probably is the Beast of Gévaudan, most descriptions of the beast are accurate to the one of the dead beast: size, colour, wounds and... they found humans rest in its stomach.
Common explanation at that time, and kept by historians, is the fact it's a mix between a wolf and a dog. It's common at that time. In 2016 a reconstitution was made following the description in the proceedings [here](_URL_2_).
In a letter wrote maybe by a practitioner *[...] its physiognomy being softer than a wolf, I think it's a mulet [hybrid] between a wolf and a dog, or a dog and a she-wolf.* (p. 612).
Another theory: it was an exotic animal. Since the beginning, when the captain Duhamel (captain of the Dragons) came, he wrote in his letters the possibility of being an African beast like a leopard or a lion. The notable beast was the hyena which could have escaped from some fair. A theory about the lion on [NationalGeographic](_URL_5_).
I'm not a reliable source by far, and I think it's not really allowed(?), but I don't find it really convincing myself, the comment of Rob explain why, Karl answered this but didn't convince me though.
Sources:
* Amazing chronology and lot of information in this [.pdf](_URL_1_) , compiling a lot of different sources in French (656p), but Alain Bonet.
* La bête du Gévaudan, G. Lenôtre ISBN 979-10-94569-27-6
* Comptes des frais de chasse de la Bête du Gévaudan (1765), et d'un loup qui désolait les diocèses de Grasse et de Fréjus. (1788-1789). [On Gallica](_URL_4_).
* [Website about the Beast](_URL_3_) I wanted an English "source" so I put that. You have translated extract of documents. It doesn't explain really what was the beast, but you'll have some information which can be helpful.
If you have any questions don’t hesitate.
| [
"Historians and other researchers on the beast of Gévaudan have often been taken by the parallel between the story of the beast and that of the French resistance. The fact that 3,000 Nazi soldiers in the search for dissidents were not able to find 2,700 maquis fighters surrounding the Mont Mouchet forest where two ... |
In theory how much more energy can we get from fusion than from fission? | Both fusion and fission are fairly comparable in terms of the energy density of their respective fuels this because they involve the same nuclear forces. The energy density in units of kWh / kg (energy per unit mass) for each:
Fossil fuels: ~10
U-235 (fission): 20,000,000
D-T (40/60) (fusion): 100,000,000
So both fusion and fission are on another level than fossil fuels. The thing about fossil fuels is that the energy release is from chemical bonds being broken and reformed whereas nuclear fusion and fission get their energy from nuclear bonds being made. | [
"The total energy output, 17.6 MeV, is one tenth of that with fission, but the ingredients are only one-fiftieth as massive, so the energy output per unit mass is approximately five times as great. In this fusion reaction, 14 of the 17.6 MeV (80% of the energy released in the reaction) shows up as the kinetic energ... |
Why can we see the colours of lasers? | You certainly can see lasers with the naked eye! It's just very dangerous to look at them directly, because they can damage your retina irreparably.
You need to think about the light coming out of a laser like a stream of bullets from a rifle. They go completely straight, and once properly focused form a tight beam. Lasers can be made so that the diameter of the beam doesn't change by more than fractions of an inch over miles of distance.
Just like you can stand off target from a rifle and not be hit by a bullet, you can stand beside a laser and not see the beam. The photons have to hit your pupil for you to see the laser (assuming the laser is emitting visible light). Normal light sources are like shot guns in comparison, the light flings out in all directions (though again, the can be focused, though not as well generally speaking). But again, you can only see the light if photons from that source hit your pupil and are focused onto your retina.
So why can you see a laser when it goes through a mist? Well to extend out rifle analogy, this is akin to firing the rifle into a concrete wall, and you get ricochets, which now might hit you anywhere. When the laser photons hits the particles of mist they are refracted around, bending this way and that (each little droplet of mist is a little prism) and some of them get bent around until they fly into your eye, and then you can see them. This is also why you can see lasers in dusty rooms (the little particles of dust are also prisms).
You can change the colour of the laser light by the process of fluorescence. Here the fluorescent molecule absorbs light at one wavelength, but emits it at a very different wavelength. This is not restricted to laser light. This is what happens to your T-shirt under "black light" aka UV light. There are chemicals in the T-shirt that absorb the UV light and emit light at a variety of wavelengths, appearing white. | [
"Lasers can be designed to operate within specific wavelengths of light, within the visible spectrums and beyond. For example, lasers can detect chlorophyll by stimulating fluorescence using specific wavelengths, a process that is very effective for removing foreign material from green vegetables.\n",
"Many sourc... |
why is it that people in ancient times seemed to be so much more violent and not squeamish about seeing gory things compared with today? | I grew up on a farm and saw tons of dead animals. We had a nasty dog for a few months who liked to kill the chickens. Whenever we found a bloody pile of guts and feathers we were supposed to tell my dad so he could deal with it.
I've noticed a different mindset between people who grew up like that and people who grew up in city's away from exposure to death. Maybe that's it. | [
"Because in western culture death is sometimes seen as the ultimate loss of control, fear of it may produce death anxiety in the form of a sense of extreme shame or narcissistic mortification. The shame in this context is produced by the loss of stoicism, productivity, and control, aspects that are highly valued by... |
why is the jurisdiction of the 12 circuit courts so uneven? | All of the federal courts of appeal were set up based on geography and population at the time, but there has been a lot of population shift since they were established. In the 1980's, the 5th circuit had experienced a huge growth in population and caseload, so it was split in two and the 11th circuit was created.
There are lots of people who think it's time to split the 9th circuit for the same reasons, but because the appointment of judges has become so political in recent years, it would be take a huge investment of political willpower to do it. It would be characterized as a power grab if either democrats or republicans attempted it. And, for what its worth, many of the people who are most vocal advocates for splitting the 9th circuit do indeed have political motivations: they view the 9th circuit as too liberal, so the real goal is to use it as a way to appoint more conservative judges, rather than fixing an administrative problem of too much workload for one court. | [
"Despite the Supreme Court's desire to resolve conflicts between circuit courts, legal scholars disagree about whether circuit splits are detrimental or beneficial. Some argue that circuit splits are harmful because they create confusion and encourage forum shopping, while other scholars argue that variation among ... |
why does water form hydrogen bonds with other water molecules and not covalent bonds? why doesn’t water form hydrogen bonds in a single molecule? | A covalent bond is the result of two atoms sharing electrons to fill each other's valance shell.(hence the term co-valent) It's a bit like how velcro or a jigsaw puzzle fits together. It's a strong bond, not easily broken, but given enough energy it can.
Hydrogen bonding is a result of the polarity of water. Basically a water molecule is made up of one big negative nelly (oxygen) and two tiny positive pollies (hydrogen). The oxygen is so negative it attracts other water's hydrogens to it. Think refrigerator magnets or when you rub a balloon on cloth and stick it to the wall. It's a weaker interaction than a covalent bond but still makes for some interesting effects.
Since the hydrogen bond is an interaction between a positive and negative end of two different molecules, a water molecule can't hydrogen bond with itself. | [
"A single water molecule can participate in a maximum of four hydrogen bonds because it can accept two bonds using the lone pairs on oxygen and donate two hydrogen atoms. Other molecules like hydrogen fluoride, ammonia and methanol can also form hydrogen bonds. However, they do not show anomalous thermodynamic, kin... |
how facebook knows to suggest my music teacher from 2 years ago with whom i have no mutual friends | Its possible if you've sent that teacher an email from the same account as the one you've connected with Facebook. It allows Facebook to find people on your email contact list and suggest them to you. | [
"The musical follows a lifelong friendship between two men, Alvin and Thomas, whose childhood bond continues throughout their adult years. Amazon.com describes the musical as \"an authentic and affecting work, told through a series of songs in turn playful, touching and dramatic, and expertly orchestrated by Jonath... |
why is austria referred to as an empire in the german language? | Reich literally means "realm" or "kingdom", not "empire". The historical german reichs were specifically empires, but not every reich is an empire.
| [
"BULLET::::- Austrian Empire (1804–1867): This was the official name. Note that the German version is \"Kaisertum Österreich\", i.e. the English translation empire refers to a territory ruled by an emperor, not just to a \"widespreading domain\".\n",
"Historically, Austrians were regarded as ethnic Germans and vi... |
FAQ Friday - How do you define "species"? Why can some species still hybridize? | I think the important thing to remember about species is that they are concepts. Species are ideas we impose on nature for our convenience and utility.
Individual organisms are real entities, but species are a set of rules that guide our language and understanding of a collective grouping's behavior over time and space and evolution.
The biggest problem with the biological species concept is that it is framed in terms of a reproductive isolation mechanism which to most biologist's understanding does not exist in real life. Organisms don't evolve mechanisms to isolate themselves from other species. They evolve mechanisms to attract mates, not isolate themselves from other species.
Of course, definitions of species such as the [Recognition Species Concept](_URL_0_) which has advantages over the Biological Species concept also has limitations in that it can't be applied to fossils. In this case, morphological concepts are essential because behavior doesn't fossilize very well for most complex mating systems.
| [
"There are a number of different opinions regarding the validity of some species, notably apomictic microspecies and whether some 'species' may actually be hybrids. In particular, the number and definition of species in the genera \"Sorbus\" (rowans, whitebeams etc.), \"Ulmus\" (elms) and \"Salix\" (willows) are op... |
if you travel at the speed of light and turn on a flashlight, will the light of the flashlight go twice as fact as the speed of light? | a flash light cannot travel at the speed of light.
all measurements of the speed of light will always agree, no matter who measures, no matter how fast they are traveling. | [
"The speed of light is 983571056 ft/s, or about one foot per nanosecond. If it were exactly one foot per nanosecond, and a target was one data mile away, then the radar return from that target would arrive 12 microseconds after the transmission. (Recall that radar was developed during World War II in America and En... |
tumblr | Follow other blogs that post thins you are interested in. You can find blogs by typing your interests into the tag search bar
for example.
Tumblr is mainly fandom related, so if you're in a fandom, then search for blogs based on that fandom, then reblog their posts, and BAM! You're running a blog.
Tumblr can also be a place to post your own stuff, you can run a personal blog with posts about your life, etc. | [
"Tumblr (stylized as tumblr and pronounced \"tumbler\") is a microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and owned by Verizon Media. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users' blogs. Bloggers can also make their blo... |
why does it sometimes take a very long time for bad news (like a loved one dying) to sink in? why isn't it always instant? | The very first step on the stages of loss and grief is Denial and Isolation.
Learning someone is dying is very hurtful. It is a very natural reaction to deny the hurtful news to spare yourself grief, and to isolate yourself from the news, or sources of news.
Part of it is experience. The very first time you find out someone close has died it is literally one of the worst things that may have happened to you. Actually, the very first time some of us have learned about death we are too young to understand what that means.
So the very first time you understand what death is, and experience death, it is one of the worst things that has happened to you. It is very hard to understand the permanence of death until you realize you will never see someone walk into a room or call you again.
An intellectual understanding of death falls sort. So when you are first learning about death you are learning something that is almost a completely new experience that no training can really prepare you to accept. | [
"BULLET::::- \"Burying bad news\": announcing unpopular things at a time when it is believed that the media will focus on other news. In some cases, governments have released potentially controversial reports on summer long weekends, to avoid significant news coverage. Sometimes that \"other news\" is supplied by d... |
Did any minor titles of nobility exist for colonial holdings in the United States prior to the revolution? | The answer is, "sort of" and it varied from colony to colony. There were land-holdings which were, like today, hereditary, and in some places, these holdings entitled the owners to some privileges, but strictly speaking, they were not seen as titles of nobility or peerage back in the Old Country.
Let me start off by giving you a bit of background on New York, since that state is my area of expertise:
Before the English takeover, there was the title of "patroon" in the New Netherland colony, which is similar to the title of "lord" in England. These were given to owners of large areas of land, who usually had accumulated some wealth from somewhere, and then negotiated directly with one Indian tribe or another to make a land deal. (The land was actually being sold to the King who then in turn would issue a land patent/grant to the guy making the deal, but that takes us away from your question.)
Many of these patroons would turn around and sell parcels of land, but many others set up a more or less feudal system of tenant farming on their tracts of land. A farmer would pay rent on the land, and then a third ("let on thirds") or even a half ("let on halves") of the money earned for any crops or livestock raised on the land would be given to the patroon. The farmer would keep the rest.
Later, that system fell out of favor, and the tenant farmers would pay a "quit-rent". Essentially, it was a payment to the patroon so that the farmer didn't owe any earnings from crops or livestock, and was seen as a bit fairer since it was based on the fixed amount of land being rented instead of a variable amount of goods sold.
Anyway, back to your question.
These patroonships were carried over to the English crown once Great Britain took control of the renamed New York colony. Now called "manors", the land owners were often called "lords". It's important to note that the title of "lord" itself wasn't hereditary. Only the deed to the land was, and the owner of the land deed was "lord of the manor". Later, when the New York Assembly was first convened, many of these manors were granted a seat in the assembly. So as long as the lord of the manor held the deed to their large tracts of land, they were essentially given a seat of government. But again, it wasn't per se a title of nobility or peerage, and as far as I know, these manor-owners were only called "lords" informally. Certainly not at the same level as a Lord who has inherited a seat in the House of Lords.
Some of the more famous of these New York manors were the [Philipsburg Manor](_URL_11_) (part of what is today the Bronx and much of Westchester County), the [Van Cortlandt Manor](_URL_6_) (much of the rest of Westchester County), the [Livingston Manor](_URL_9_) (much of Sullivan County), and the [Rensselaerswyck Manor](_URL_14_) (near Albany, New York). Each of these had several male generations of a single family as owner of the manor, which, in turn, later gave them a seat in the Assembly.
As for the rest of the country: I'm not as much of an expert, but from what little I know, this system was uncommon, or at least abandoned much earlier, in the other Northern states, except in the border state of Maryland. [Maryland had a similar system](_URL_13_), though many of these manors were actually owned by lords back in England, such as the [Barons Baltimore](_URL_8_).
In other words, some English lords living in England owned land in North America, but that's not the same as granting noble titles to North American residents for owning land in North America. Such English lords were given lordships due to Old World landholdings, and not New World landholdings. The first Baron Baltimore got the title due to owning the Baltimore Manor in Ireland. He then bought land in Maryland, which was also named Baltimore Manor.
The Southern colonies of Virginia and Carolina had their own systems. In Virginia, many early landowners made a fortune by buying slaves and raising tobacco, and expanded their land-holdings until they owned large plantations. (See: [First Families of Virginia](_URL_1_) and the [family](_URL_10_) of [Robert E. Lee](_URL_3_), for example.) But these never had anything approaching titles of nobility, since Virginia's House of Burgesses was an elected (and not inherited) assembly from the very beginning.
In South and North Carolina, before they were split in two, there were [eight Lords Proprietor](_URL_4_) which was a land-owning title that could be inherited. Similar to the system in Maryland, the holders of this title weren't locals but were wealthy investors back in England. It wasn't a title of nobility or peerage, per se, and was abolished in the early 1700s.
> Were there long term plans to create/expand this?
As for long term plans to expand this, the straight answer is: no. In New York, before the American Revolution, the tenant farm laws were already controversial as being seen as an unfair relic of the Old World, and a number of local uprisings in reaction took place, including the [Anti-Rent War of Dutchess County](_URL_0_) and the [Great Rebellion in Westchester County](_URL_12_), both occurring in 1766. After the war, many of the remaining New York manors were split up between heirs either voluntarily, or after being confiscated by the new American government because the lord had been a Loyalist on the British side.
The last New York manor in existence was that of [Stephen Van Rensselaer III](_URL_2_
), lord of Rensselaerswyck Manor. Upon his death in 1839, his heirs tried to collect back-rent from tenant farmers, which led to the [Anti-Rent War of 1844-45](_URL_2_), which was the last nail in the coffin in the North.
I don't know much about what happened in Maryland, but I imagine, since these manors were largely owned by Englishmen back in England, any remaining landholdings were either confiscated or sold off.
In the South, while they were not lords by name, the large plantation owners, of course, were champions of slavery, leading to the Civil War. After the war, many of these plantations still operated something like tenant farms before they, too, largely dwindled away, but again, there was never any title of nobility involved.
Further sources:
_URL_7_
_URL_5_
EDIT: Spacing. | [
"A number of colonies in the 16th and 17th centuries were granted to a particular individual; these were known as proprietary colonies. Proprietary colonies in America were governed by a Lord Proprietor, who, holding authority by virtue of a royal charter, usually exercised that authority almost as an independent s... |
how does intel optane store data that is frequently used to speed loading times up? | the optane memory is used for caching. so things that you frequently use will be stored into this cache and be faster since it's optane. what makes optane faster is it's specific type of memory that is much faster than hdd/ssd's and reaching ram speeds. | [
"Loads and stores begin execution in stage three. The R8000 has two address generation units (AGUs) that calculate virtual address for loads and stores. In stage four, the virtual addresses are translated to physical addresses by a dual-ported TLB that contains 384 entries and is three-way set associative. The 16 k... |
Why do you barely feel a breeze on the back side of a fan? | Actually, that is not correct for a house fan. There is a bit of a 'suction' effect - the fan moves some air, but the moving air brings even more air with it. Notice how you can also feel a slight breeze BESIDE a fan, not just behind it?
The [dyson air multiplier](_URL_0_) takes this principle and uses it to the extreme.
| [
"For cooling, the fan's direction of rotation should be set so that air is blown downward (Usually counter-clockwise from beneath), unless in rare case in which more breeze would be felt when blowing upward, such as when it's installed in hallway where blades would be so close to the walls. The blades should lead w... |
why do athletes spank each other? | It's a comradery thing.
Being part of a team, there's a physicality that comes with it. You get changed in the dressing room together, you are all chummy and playful with each other. it's about keeping morale high and a tight knit group plays better together.
By maintaining that connection via fist bumps, hi 5's (stuff people do normally) hugs & pats on the back/butt (stuff team mates do) you keep the connection going and play better as a team. | [
"\"Spank the Baby:\" Step out with left foot, bring right foot together, meanwhile raising the left arm in the air and making a spaking motion toward one's own behind with the right hand. Spank the baby is done while walking in a circle (not around the circle).\n",
"In erotic spanking the sub is struck either wit... |
the difference of the supreme leader and president in iran | The political situation in Iran is actually pretty complicated at the moment. Technically, the surpreme leader is gods representative, he has the final say in just about everything. The first surpreme leaders had alot of power, but now the power has been shifted more away from the supreme leader. The military is also seperated in two: Theres the revolution guard, whose sole purpose is to protect the revolution (keep Iran an islamic republic). The revolution guard were originally controled by the surpreme leader (The first surpreme leader was the head of the revolution)., however corruption have made them more independent, and nobody knows exactly how much control the surpreme leader has over the revolution guard. The regular military is controlled by the president, however the revolution guard is a far grander force. As of now, you can say that the power is shared between the three forces: The supreme leader, the revolution guard and the president with his military. Who has the most power? No one is really sure of this. If you are interested in knowing more about, why the supreme leader and revolution guard even exist, I suggest you read about "The islamic revolution in Iran". | [
"The President of Iran is the country's highest directly elected official, the chief of the executive branch, and the second most important position after the Supreme Leader. Duties are similar to heads of governments in other countries, except that the armed forces, Chief judiciary system, state television, and ot... |
Why are the psychological prime colors (red, blue, yellow) different from the mixing primary colors(magenta, cyan, yellow)? | Primary colors are defined relative to their application. The main gist is making the distinction of different ways wavelengths of light can be manipulated to absorb and reflect different colors. When a certain wavelength is reflected from a surface, it enters our eyes and we see the color. When a wavelength becomes absorbed by a surface, that color never reaches our eyes.
For the mixing of light like in old TVs and monitors, the primary colors used are red, blue and green and they are based on the premise that black is a complete lack of any wavelengths being reflected. The RGB color scheme is "additive", in that you start with black -- and mixing more colors increases the number of wavelengths that are reflected back to our retinas.
While for printing and pigment mixing purposes, cyan, magenta and yellow are used on the premise that white is the summation of all wavelengths of visible light. The CMY color scheme is "subtractive", in that you start with white -- and mixing more colors will *subtract* from the number of wavelengths being reflected into our retinas. After all, there is no such thing as a magenta wavelength... it is the result of green wavelengths being subtracted from white light.
So, the RGB colors are based on the premise of *adding* wavelengths to black to convey certain colors. By adding a whole buttload of wavelengths together (until they become pretty much a continuous spectrum), eventually *every* color becomes reflected and so what we see is white.
On the other hand, the CMY colors are based on the *subtraction* of wavelengths from white to convey certain colors by controlling which wavelengths are *not* reflected. So, eventually subtracting tons and tons of wavelengths means you will essentially absorb *all* colors, leaving you with black.
| [
"By convention, the three primary colors in additive mixing are red, green, and blue. In the absence of light of any color, the result is black. If all three primary colors of light are mixed in equal proportions, the result is neutral (gray or white). When the red and green lights mix, the result is yellow. When g... |
Russia currently have a military base in Syria. Did Russia (or the U.S.S.R.) ever have any other external military bases like this (during and after the Cold War)? | [Here's a list](_URL_2_) of current Russian bases. [More detail here if you want it.](_URL_0_)
There were a number of overseas Soviet installations during the Cold War, not counting deployment in the Warsaw Pact nations or in occupied territory like Afghanistan or northern Iran. Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam was a massive base, and the Soviets sent thousands of troops with nuclear missiles to Cuba in the leadup to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Soviet advisers and installations were once thick on the ground in the Middle East and Africa. A friendly regime in Yemen allowed the Soviets to set up bases in Aden and Socotra. The Soviets had facilities in Berbera, Somalia, but moved them to Assab, Ethiopia in the 1970s.
EDIT: [Here's a list](_URL_1_) of Soviet overseas facilities in 1988, near the end of the Cold War. | [
"As well as the large number of Russians fighting for al-Qaeda or ISIS, thousands have fought on the government side. Up until 2015, Russia provided military assistance and private contractors (at least 1,700 Russian contractors had reportedly been deployed to Syria up 2017), but from September 2015 formal Russian ... |
what are mob mentality and group think? can someone explain them and the differences li5? | Hmmm, I'll try my best.
Imagine some of the worse things you've thought about doing. Being intensely angry at someone, looting a store, setting someplace on fire. Admit it, at one time or another, you've thought of doing something crazy. Mob mentality happens when the barrier between political correctness and crazy acts of violence is broken. Once some people join in, others are tempted to join in, and it just grows.
Group think is more similar to peer pressure. Humans are a social race, so there is a natural pressure for us to do what others do. If you live in a country where it is perfectly acceptable to slap your grandma as a way of saying "Hello", then you will more than likely never think otherwise about it. Group think is less about primal rage than mob mentality. | [
"Herd mentality, mob mentality and pack mentality, also lesser known as gang mentality, describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis. When individuals are affected by mob mentality, they may make different decisions than they wo... |
why do things turn to stone over millions of years and is it really stone? | Check out [petrified wood](_URL_0_).
Quick explanation: organic material is buried which slows down decomposition. Over time water filled with minerals flows through the material and the minerals get deposited on the organic material. After a long time, the organic material finally decomposes, but the minerals are left behind, creating a "rock" formed that looks exactly like the organic mineral they were deposited onto. | [
"Stone is the one category of material which is used by (virtually) all human cultures and, for the vast majority of the human past, is the only record of human behaviour. The end of prehistory does not signify the end of stone working; stones were knapped in Medieval Europe, well into the 19th century in many part... |
200 years ago in Japan, how much did accent and language very depending on class? Would it be easy to tell if someone was a peasant, a samurai or a daimyo based on how they spoke? | Might want to x-post to /r/linguistics. | [
"Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial texts did not appear until the 8th century. During the Heian period (794–1185), Chinese had considerable influence on the vocabulary and phonology ... |
c - linked lists | Ok. Take a piece of paper out and imagine that as 'memory' in the system (Heap or stack, doesn't matter). Create a single Dot somewhere on the page and write the word "my program start" above it. This represents the first instruction of your program being executed.
Now create a single box (around 1" square) somewhere on the page. That is one node of your linked list. But how does the 'start' dot get to the linked list node? Well, you use a pointer:
LinkedList *ll_head = < Linked List node >
Ok. So that's one node. How do I get to the next node? Put a small rectangle in your linked-list node box and write the word 'next node' into it. Then draw another linked-list node somewhere else on the page and draw an arrow from that 'linked list next node' field into that second box. If programming this, realize that the pointer to the head LL node and the pointer to the 'next' node are the same type (IE: if one was initialized int *, the other will be an int * too!)
Congratulations, you have now made a two node linked list. "But I need to go backwards"! Well, how did we go forwards? Now, how do you imagine you'll go backwards?
That's all a linked list is. It's a chunk of memory that holds some useful data and at least one pointer to the next element in the list. If you actually take the time to draw the pictures out of the data structure it *should* make sense to you. | [
"In capability-based computer security, a C-list is an array of capabilities, usually associated with a process and maintained by the kernel. The program running in the process does not manipulate capabilities directly, but refers to them via C-list indexes—integers indexing into the C-list.\n",
"The copula \"C\"... |
Could the end results of round-robin tournaments be reliably predicted based on a smaller amount of randomized matches? | Yes, you can do sparse pairwise comparisons and still get decent ratings. This has been done for decades in chess, for example, with the Elo system. Glicko and Glicko-2 are highly regarded generalizations of Elo. Most online games today involve some sort of server-side rating system, although these tend to be more complicated because the comparisons aren't necessarily always pairwise.
A rating system associates with each entity a rating, and a model, which associates with a *difference* in rating the probability that the higher rated entity would win a match between the two. (The quality of the rating system depends crucially on the choice made here.) Based on actual recorded results one can then update the ratings via a Bayesian inversion argument. Usually this is a little complicated so the method is approximated somehow, but the core idea is exactly that.
* Elo: _URL_0_
* Glicko: _URL_1_ | [
"In theory, a round-robin tournament is the fairest way to determine the champion from among a known and fixed number of contestants. Each contestant, whether player or team, has equal chances against all other opponents because there is no prior seeding of contestants that will preclude a match between any given p... |
why does dog poop turn white after its been sitting outside for an extended period of time? | It's calcified due to excess calcium, probably from eating bones. The rest decomposes and that's left behind.
The fuzziness is just mould. | [
"Pugs have many wrinkles in their faces, so owners will often clean inside the creases to avoid irritation and infection. If this is not done, the dog may develop a condition known as skin fold dermatitis.\n",
"Because of their double coat, Keeshonden need regular brushing; an hour a week will keep the dog comfor... |
In the making of calendars thousands of years ago, how would people nail down that the year was 365 days long? Analemmas, maybe from the shadows of a sort of gnomon at noon? | > Analemmas, maybe from the shadows of a sort of gnomon at noon?
Yes, or observing the stars. It is easy to figure out that the year is about 365 days long, and with observations over decades you can also get the simple leap year rule (1 every 4 years, or 365.25 days per year) with quite primitive tools. The true value is about 365.2425, so you are off by just 0.75 days after 100 years, and calendars rarely lasted more than a few centuries.
Apart from that: Some calendars were not aligned with the seasons, and some were aligned simply by adding or removing days as needed. "Let's add an extra day" was easier back then. | [
"In the 13th century, Rabbi Isaac ben Samuel of Acre made the insight that, since Sabbatical cycles existed before man was created, time before Adam and Eve must be measured in divine years, not human years. Psalm 90:4 says, \"For a thousand years in thy sight are but like yesterday when it is past, and like a watc... |
How come the loss of Varus's three legions was a disaster and Cannae and Carrhae were just bumps in the road? | I don't agree that Cannae and Carrhae were simply "bumps in the road". What made the loss of Varus' legions so [potentially] disastrous was that those 3 legions were the defenders between the Germanians and the civilians in the Roman empire. The loss of those legions would not have been as bad if it had happened 40 years earlier, before Augustus reduced the number of legions in the empire to less than half of what it was after Actium. As it stood in 9 AD, the Germanians could easily have walked quite far down south if they had had that desire. It's usually stated that the road to Rome lay free, but that's assuming the Romans wouldn't have mobilized other legions, so it's a bit misinformative.
The loss at Carrhae was arguable less bad than both Cannae and the Teotoburger forest, but it was hardly negligable. Before Caesar was killed he planned a revenge campaign against the Partians for that loss, but it was never executed because of the civil war that followed Caesar's assassination. What that means to us is that it took almost two additional generations for Rome to gain control^1 over the Levant.
So comes Cannae. The Second Punic war was extremely costly for Rome, especially during the first few years. Keep in mind that Cannae was just the end event of a series of battles. The Romans actually lost full legions a few times from the battle of Trebia and down through the Italic peninsula before they finally gathered a massive force (estimated to have been around 70.000 men) to beat down Hannibal completely. At this time (216 BCE) the city of Rome had roughly 250.000 inhabitants, but the army gathered was of course not just Romans, but also allies from various cities on the peninsula.
As I'm sure you're aware, the Romans lost the battle and it was a truly crushing defeat. Even discounting the 10-15.000 soldiers that followed Varro away from the battle, the Romans lost roughly 50.000 soldiers in that one day. If you count in percentages (not really academic, but gives a clearer picture of just how bad that was), that's arguably the worst single day in European history, and without doubt in ancient times.
What followed the battle was a complete turn-around in Roman tactics. However, not to be dismissed is that ~~Hannibal actually marched on Rome after Cannae and besieged it~~,^2 but realised that his army was too beaten to actually launch an attack on the city with the population ready to defend at all costs inside the gates. Anyway, after Cannae the Romans avoided a direct confrontation with Hannibal at all costs for over a decade and it would take generations for the male population on the Italic peninsula to recover from the disaster.
These events all happened at different times in Roman history (216 BCE, 53 BCE and 9 AD) so we can't really say that one event was worse than another, but knowing a bit more about these events might help you construe an opinion for yourself.
[1] The Levant was never really under full Roman control, the area was plagued by revolutions and border wars for centuries.
[2] /u/edXcitizen87539319 informed me that this isn't commonly accepted, which I wasn't aware of, so I scratched that part. | [
"Zonaras wrote that all the Romans would have been killed had it not been for a wounded elephant trumpeting and throwing the rest of these animals into confusion. This \"restrained Pyrrhus from pursuit and the Romans thus managed to cross the river and make their escape into an Apulian city.\" Cassius Dio wrote tha... |
Can lighting strike you underwater? | It cannot directly strike you underwater. But you could still be electrocuted. When lightning strikes a resistive material, like sea water or even dirt, the current spreads out in all directions. It sets up what is called a current or voltage gradient. If your body happens to intercept that gradient at a point of sufficient intensity, you can be electrocuted. It most likely will drop off with the cube of distance from the strike point. So the further away or the deeper you are the better. Since lightning comes in current values from about 10,000 to 200,000 amps there is no set rule for how safe any particular depth will be. But from what I have read, 8 feet will not be enough. I heard cows 300 feet away from a tree hit in the field have been electrocuted. The rubber suit will do nothing. Unless it was totally and completely enclosed, with not even pin holes to the sea water. otherwise the current can enter there. | [
"BULLET::::- Dive lights, which are usually waterproof and pressure rated torches or flashlights, are essential for safety in low visibility or dark environments such as night diving and wreck and cave penetration. They are useful for communication and signalling both underwater and on the surface at night. Divers ... |
what is a "manic pixie dream girl" and why is twitter so angry about them? | I can think of no better source to explain it than [TV Tropes.](_URL_0_)
Basically it's a stock character in movies and TV shows that many claim is more a male fantasy than a realistic person. | [
"The term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” was coined in 2007 by film critic Nathan Rabin to describe a female character who exists solely “to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.\" The Manic Pixie Dream Girl improves the life of the male protagonist and makes him a ... |
why does jury duty pay so little? | So you don't draw out the trial (deadlock) to get more money. | [
"Jury fees refer to the daily stipend paid to jurors. The source of these fees varies according to the kind of trial. Government pays the fees in criminal trials, while the litigants share the costs in a civil action as part of court costs. Not infrequently, the entire burden of court costs may be shifted to the lo... |
how signals, be they cell phone signals or data through internet lines, are transmitted along their medium without becoming overwritten or scrambled by other signals also travel through the same medium. | There are two main ways.
One is called TDMA (Time-division multiple access). In this scenario, everyone that's on a particular cell-tower takes turns transmitting data. You might get 1-2ms, and then the next guy gets 1-2ms, and so on in a big circle. The turns happen so frequently that you don't notice it happening. Naturally, if you have too many people then the circle gets too big and people start to notice the degradation of quality. So what really happens is the cell tower doesn't let too many people join the circle, the newcomers just get "Service Busy" or "Service Denied" on their phones. GSM phones use TDMA (AT & T, T-mobile, etc.)
The other is called CDMA (Code-division multiple access). In this scenario, each user gets an orthogonal code to use. Think about an xy-graph. You can move a dot in the X-direction (left & right) without affecting the Y-direction (up & down). So, you could have 2 users, one person moves in the X-direction, and another moves in the Y-direction (kind of like the knobs on an etch-a-sketch). Both people can send data at the same time without affecting each other. In the real world, there are many many different codes, and the cell tower can differentiate between all of them. Phones detect which codes are not in use, and when you make a call your phone uses an unused code. However, there are still more phones than codes, so if too many people try to talk then they'll get the "Service Busy" message. CDMA phones work on Verizon, Sprint, etc. | [
"Communicating data from one location to another requires some form of pathway or medium. These pathways, called communication channels, use two types of media: cable (twisted-pair wire, cable, and fiber-optic cable) and broadcast (microwave, satellite, radio, and infrared). Cable or wire line media use physical wi... |
is personality part of our genetics? for instance, are we chemically designed to "be who we are?" | Nature vs nurture
Tendency is part of our genes
Ie. having genes of a natural mathematician may increase your "likelihood" of being a highly logical person.
People can also change in response to the environment(ie experience)
So really it is not either this or that, but a dynamic interplay between both aspects | [
"Personality traits are an individual's enduring manner of perceiving, feeling, evaluating, reacting, and interacting with other people specifically, and with their environment more generally. Because reliable and valid personality inventories give a relatively accurate representation of a person's characteristics,... |
Why is a coin less likely to be heads immediately after a heads has been thrown? | So it's crucial to understand the underlying sample space for which these probabilities are calculated.
Suppose we have a coin that gives probability *p* of turning up heads on any given flip. Now flip the coin *n* times. Now let P(n,k) be the probability that, given a run of *k* consecutive heads, the next flip is heads. It turns out that P(n,k) is **not** equal to *p*. In fact, if we let Q(n,k) be the *empirical* probability associated to P(n,k), then the expected value of Q(n,k) given a fixed total number of heads is always strictly less than *p*. (The empirical probability is just the result of estimating P(n,k) from a given experiment.)
Perhaps an explicit example will make it clear how these probabilities are calculated. Consider n = 3 with a fair coin. There are 8 total possible sequences, all equally likely. However, since we are calculating the probability of a head *after* a head, we have to discount the two sequences TTH and TTT. We cannot condition on the last flip since there is no next flip. So at least one of the first two flips has to be heads for the conditioning to be defined. The 6 remaining sequences are:
> HHH
> HHT
> HTH
> HTT
> THH
> THT
Okay, for each of these sequences, let's calculate Q(3,1), the (empirical) probability that, given a flip of heads, the next flip is also heads. For the sequence HHH, Q = 1, since no matter which of the first two heads we choose, the next flip is always heads. For the sequence HHT, we get Q = 1/2. If we choose the first head, we get success (next flip is also heads). If we choose the second head, we get failure (next flip is not heads). We assume that the choice of the conditioned flip is random. So we have a 50% chance of success. The remaining empirical probabilities are:
> HHH... Q = 1
> HHT... Q = 1/2
> HTH... Q = 0
> HTT... Q = 0
> THH... Q = 1
> THT... Q = 0
What is the expected value of Q? The expectation is taken with respect to a sample space in which all 6 of these sequences are equally likely. So the expected value of Q is just the simple average of the values of Q above:
> E[ Q(3,1) ] = (1+1/2+1)/6 = 5/12
This is less than 50%!
> Apparently the researchers have said that the odds of a heads throw immediately following another heads throw is much less that the 50% you would expect for a fair coin (around 40%). Can someone explain this to me?
In the language above, the figure of 40% is for n = 4 and k = 1. (The exact figure is actually 17/42 = 40.48%, and you can calculate it for yourself similarly to how we calculated the expected probability for n = 3.)
[The paper you link](_URL_0_) has a good intuitive explanation, which begins at the bottom of page 3 of the text and ends at the top of page 7. The unit of analysis, as the paper describes, is not the fundamental element, but rather runs of length *k* are. The fact that we are also dealing only with *finite* sequences of flips is key as well. Since the probabilities are conditioned on the total number of heads but the analysis is given in terms of runs, there is a constraint between the runs and the total number of heads. (If r(k) is the number of runs of length k and H is the total number of heads, then the following identity must hold: 1r(1)+2r(2)+3r(3)+...+Hr(H) = H.) Note, however, that if the total number of flips n goes to infinity, then the conditional probability does asymptote to the underlying probability *p*.
Phenomena like this "hot hand fallacy" tend to be categorized under the umbrella term "law of small numbers". Finite initial segments of data exhibit what is called *selection bias*, and the "hot hand fallacy" is a special case of that. We are not only selecting (i.e., conditioning) on a segment of length *n* but also on a run of length *k*. The bias never disappears for any finite value of *n*, but it does disappear as n goes to infinity. Hence we get the Law of Large Numbers (which is an actual mathematical theorem). Both the hot hand fallacy and the gambler's fallacy ultimately stem from treating finite initial segments of flips as segments that must obey all of the same properties as infinite segments. For instance, the gambler's fallacy is essentially the thought that any deviation from the mean ought to correct itself in some pre-determined number of flips. But no such correction need occur for any finite number of flips.
**So does this mean that the gambler's fallacy or the hot hand fallacy is actually correct?** No. For several reasons. If the value of *n* (the total number of flips) is not fixed then the conditioning described above makes no sense. Be aware of what the experiment actually is: one "trial" is 4 flips of a coin. The entire experiment is many trials. That is, we are always only ever considering segments of length 4 (or whatever length you want really, but the length is fixed). Again your second link (which I reproduced above) has a section on why the gambler's fallacy persists in many people:
> "Thus, one might conclude that because people are effectively only exposed to finite sequences of outcomes, the natural learning environment is *wicked*, in the sense that it does not allow people to calibrate to the true conditional probabilities with experience alone."
In other words, the fallacy persists *precisely* because we interpret, say, the results of a roulette game, as the "flips" in one of the many finitely long "trials" in an experiment.
| [
"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... |
Laws that the U.S. broke during and before the Cuban Missile Crisis | I couldn't tell you if it was in violation of any international laws at the time, but when the revolutionary government in Cuba began its land reform program, the United States initiated a covert bombing operation in 1959, targeting Cuban agriculture and killing several farmers. In 1961, the U.S. again bombed Cuba, in preparation for its invasion force of counterrevolutionary Cuban expats, which were defeated by a militia force led by Che Guevara. None of this was really in the light of the Cold War, as the Cuban Revolution had not been declared socialist (despite the presence of Guevara), Cuban relations with the U.S.S.R. were rather cold (the Soviets didn't trust Castro), and U.S. officials in Cuba reported that Castro had little interest in international communism. It was, most basically, an attack motivated by the economic interests of U.S. owners of Cuban land whose profits were threatened by popular Cuban land reform programs.
You must understand that, while the U.S.S.R. acted out of completely separate geopolitical interests in its struggle with the U.S., Cuba was acting upon a history of U.S. dominance in Latin America. Guevara had been present in Guatemala in 1954, when the United States had waged a campaign of terror and violence to overthrow the democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, for the land reform program of his government (both the U.S. Secretary of State and the head of the CIA were on the board of United Fruit, in addition to being brothers). Cuba saw such acts as imperialism, cut-and-dry, and sought to resist the influence of the empire. This is why Guevara was so intent on pushing a land reform agenda, and why he was ready this time with a militia to fight off the U.S. invasion.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, then, happened in an environment in which Cuba had already been bombed and invaded by the United States, in an echo of an anti-democratic coup that the U.S. had perpetrated in Guatemala only a few years prior. Cuba, contrary to popular belief, was never formally aligned with the U.S.S.R., as a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement, though its position was "non-alignment, not neutrality", and it naturally favored (and usually had decent relations with) most other Leninist states.
A couple other answers I've given should help you here:
["Why did Cuba go with the Soviet Union?"](_URL_0_)
["Is there a theme for the motives behind America's foreign coups?"](_URL_2_)
There are more answers on Latin America, Cuba, and Guevara at [my user profile page](_URL_1_). | [
"The Cuban Missile Crisis (October Crisis in Cuba) was a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over nuclear missiles that were deployed in Cuba and Turkey. The Russian missiles were placed both to protect Cuba from further attacks by the United States after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, an... |
how do we not run out of oxygen with an increasing population and our sources of producing o2 seemingly in decline? | Over 80% of atmospheric oxygen is produced by algae and plankton in the ocean. Another 5% or so is from the natural breakdown of the water molecule separating. That leaves only around 15% from land plants. While wild areas are in decline, we also grow a lot of crops. And for reference Corn fields in the USA produce around 4 times the oxygen of the South American Rainforest with less than 1/4 the land usage. So the idea that O2 production is or should be in decline is a misunderstanding of things. | [
"Others, including Australian researcher Chris Gore, and New Zealand researcher Will Hopkins, dispute this and instead claim the gains are primarily a result of other adaptions such as a switch to a more economic mode of oxygen utilization.\n",
"At present, it is still believed that molecular oxygen was not a sig... |
in a plane crash into water, what actually kills you? | G-forces. Blunt force trauma. Drowning. Being shredded to little tiny pieces. | [
"Aircraft also sometimes end up in water by running off the ends of runways, landing in water short of the end of a runway, or even being forcibly flown into the water during suicidal/homicidal events. Twice at LaGuardia Airport, aircraft have rolled into the East River.\n",
"If the aircraft crashed on land, it w... |
what causes people to refute hard proven facts like the earth being a sphere, etc? can it be concidered a mental illness? | [Delusion:](_URL_0_)
> An idiosyncratic belief or impression maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder.
So not necessarily a mental disorder, but often a symptom of mental disorder. | [
"The second part of the paradox is asserted to be based on a real world, which exists and behaves in the same manner regardless of whether or not people exist or whether they know about the real world. This is described as the \"intransitive domain of knowledge\". Reducing knowledge to ontology is referred to as th... |
why haven't any car manufacturers made a hybrid or "earth-friendly" vehicles that are appealing when it comes to looks/design? | Have you looked into the [Tesla Model S](_URL_0_)? | [
"It is not currently possible to produce a single car design that fully meets both UN and US requirements simultaneously, but it is growing easier as technology and both sets of regulations evolve. Given the size of the US vehicle market, and differing marketing strategies in North America vs. the rest of the world... |
why does reddit look different in firefox and chrome? | Browsers work differently, and they render pages differently.
A website is mostly code, a language that tells the browser how the page should look, and what content it has. It's up to the browser to read what the website wants, and to draw it to screen.
(Although a HTML 4 Standard exists), there's nothing that states exactly how browsers have to draw things.
If a website says it wants a horizontal line, that's kind of vague, so the browser draws the line how ever it wants. There are style sheets that can add more meaning to the line, but still, the browser has to interpret what the style sheet is saying.
Also, some browsers have better Javascript engines, image rendered, memory management, caching, etc, etc that will vary performance browser to browser.
(Just curious, Reddit barely looks any different between browsers on my machine, is there anything that sticks out?) | [
"Firefox can have themes added to it, which users can create or download from third parties to change the appearance of the browser. The Firefox add-on website also gives users the ability to add other applications such as games, ad-blockers, screenshot apps, and many other apps.\n",
"Until November 2018, Firefox... |
as a non american - santa's race? what's up with that? | First, actual St. Nick was Anatolian, and was, apparently, most likely a [dark-skinned "Greek"](_URL_0_).
Now, for the recent news. An African-American reporter wrote [an article](_URL_1_), talking about how, as a child, it was tough to reconcile "white" Santa with her black father dressing up as Santa, and how as the U.S. gets less and less homogeneously white, we might want to make Santa more accessible to all the kids. Her not quite serious suggestion was that he should be a penguin, rather than a person of any color, though in the beginning of the article, she suggests that maybe a better thing to do would be to just say that one of Santa's magic powers, beyond the flying reindeer, is that he can look like any race. You already know about the Fox news thing that followed.
I don't think "black people" as a group, or "white people" are upset about this. It got a lot of news coverage because it's kind of a silly story that was easy to joke about, and let people talk about things they wanted to talk about anyway (republicans are racist; Liberals are too sensitive; fox news is evil; democrats don't understand reality; blah blah, blah). I will leave it to you whether you think the original author's point is reasonable or not, but that's the status of the question in the U.S.
| [
"The Great Race is a Native American legend surrounding the Red Racetrack, a ring shaped depression surrounding the interior of the Black Hills. The legend tells the story of when buffalo and man raced each other to establish order in the universe. The stories differ from tribe to tribe but the constant theme is th... |
how do 'fake news' companies make money | Adverts on their websites and most likely by selling any information that website can gather from you, too. | [
"21st century fake news is often intended to increase the financial profits of the news outlet. In an interview with NPR, Jestin Coler, former CEO of the fake media conglomerate Disinfomedia, said who writes fake news articles, who funds these articles, and why fake news creators create and distribute false informa... |
People say AC should be kept on when defrosting your car windows at winter. It's supposed to remove humidy from the air. As far as I know - heating is done by circulating hot engine coolant thru a radiator in the air duct. How does AC benefit this process? | AC is done via condensors around the air supply ducts. People generally think of air conditioning as a temperature control thing, but when it was originally invented, it was to control both temperature and humidity in a print shop, with humidity being the bigger issue.
So your car's system works by the engine generating heat, the radiator taking a coolant and running it past the engine to disperse that heat, a fan blowing over the radiator to warm the air and push it up the duct, and then the air conditioner's condenser taking the moisture and circulating the air back up to the vents.
So when you have your air set to warm instead of cold, the cooling aspect of AC isn't used, only the condenser that dehumidifies the air.
However, this is also why it's important to be on inside air when doing this instead of outside air; otherwise, you're not recursively stripping the moisture out of the vehicle, you're stripping moisture out of the outside environment and feeding that into the vehicle, which isn't as efficient.
Sorry for the rambling; Did all that make sense? | [
"Forced ventilation to increase ACH becomes a necessity to maintain acceptable air quality as occupants become reluctant to open windows due to behavioural changes such as keeping windows closed for security.\n",
"Because an air conditioner moves heat between the indoor coil and the outdoor coil, both must be kep... |
what happens to the presidency and political houses if trump is convicted? | Trump cannot currently be tried in a normal court. He must be impeached by the House of Representatives, removed from office via conviction in the Senate which would make him a private citizen again, and then a grand jury could be convened to decide whether or not there is enough evidence to prosecute him for violating a law on the books.
If this were to happen, Vice President Pence would assume the office of President and serve as our 46th President of the United States at least until January 2021. | [
"The president may be dismissed from office by Parliament only on the basis of a charge made by the Legislative Assembly of state treason or another grievous crime supported by a ruling of the Constitutional Court. Such a decision requires the support of two-thirds of the Jogorku Kenesh who are immediately dismisse... |
why are drones so simple yet helicopters so complex? why not make a large human-transporting drone? | Drones use the lift of each individual rotor to control the [pitch and roll](_URL_0_) of the craft. When it wants to pitch forward, the rotors in the back increase speed and produce more thrust, pitching the front down and moving the whole thing forward. It takes a fair bit of computing power to control the speed of each rotor to exactly how much thrust you need and to allow you to simply push a control stick forward and have the craft know to increase rotor speed in the back. And of course, when it needs to go up, you just increase the speed on all of them.
Helicopters, on the other hand, use a [complicated method of controlling the pitch of the rotors](_URL_2_). The rotors don't change speed. Once they're spun up, they stay going exactly that fast the entire time. When the craft wants to go up, the pitch of the rotor blades is increased so that the rotor creates more lift. That's controlled by the [swashplate](_URL_5_), a disk under the rotor. To go forward, the swashplate is angled so the rotor blades' pitch changes only in *part* of the circle so that more lift is generated at the back of the helicopter and less at the front (actually because of [gyroscopic precession](_URL_4_) the blade angle is changed when it's at the side of the helicopter, not the back...but that's not important right now).
So you have two different methods of controlling your altitude and pitch and roll. The method helicopters use scales down just fine. But the method drones use *does not* scale up very well at all. Mostly this is because as you increase the size of your rotors, you have to increase the size of your engine, and pretty soon an electric motor isn't good enough, you need a gas engine (most helicopters use a [jet engine](_URL_6_)). The problem is that gas engines don't speed up or slow down quickly and easily. There's a lag time between putting on the gas and the engine revving up, because you've got big heavy metal parts to speed up or slow down. Your rotor is getting much heavier, too, and the inertia makes it difficult to force the rotor to speed up or slow down quickly.
With drones, being able to very quickly correct your thrust is **critical** to maintaining level flight. The computer in a drone is constantly tweaking the rotor speeds to keep it level. They can get away with it because the blades are small and made of plastic, usually, so they're super light and they use electric motors. When you scale it up to gas engines and large rotors, it just isn't possible to maintain that kind of very fine control. Changing the pitch of the blades, though, is fast and "easy" (in the sense that it doesn't take a lot of force, but it's damn complicated), since you're not fighting the inertia of the spinning.
There's also the problem that bigger blades are more efficient. Small blades have to spin *really* fast to generate lift, bigger blades can spin slower. The flip side of that is that as you increase the length of your rotor blade, you have to account for the fact that the end is going significantly faster than the base, and if you go *too* fast that end breaks the sound barrier and then *terrible things happen*. So not only are large blades more efficient at slower speeds, you need to keep them at slower speeds. There's a point where you're trying to scale up your rotor blades and it's just not worth having four smaller rotors when one or two big ones will do the job better, safer, and with less fuel.
So the fastest way to control your lift to maintain control of your large craft is to vary the pitch of the rotor blades, which means your blades don't have to be small. And your engine is big and heavy and uses valuable fuel, so you want the blades to be much larger so they're more efficient. And shoving four big huge helicopter-sized rotors onto a single craft is expensive, inefficient, and *dangerous*, so you're better off using [just two to be as efficient as possible](_URL_1_), and those are pretty big and you're not in the military trying to move tanks around, so you probably just need the lift of a single rotor which can be easily balanced with a tail rotor and *oh look* we're back to a normal helicopter!
There is [the syncrocopter](_URL_3_), which is, apparently, easier to control than a normal helicopter (easy enough for a computer to handle it). The biggest downside to it is that it's much more dangerous to approach from anywhere other than directly in front of it.
EDITS: clarity, adding some links and such. Shoutout to u/MrPennywhistle for teaching me about helicopters with Smarter Every Day! | [
"Drones are used by the military in situations where manned flight is considered too risky or difficult. The United States Air Force has drones that range from small intelligence drones to surveillance drones and large spy planes. The drones are unmanned, but they have a pilot. Trained crew steer the craft through ... |
When does cellular death occur for edible vegetables and plants? | Ultimately, it depends when you consume it.
To elaborate, if you picked a fruit straight from the tree (ergo, apple or pear) and ate it straight away, whilst apoptosis and necrosis would be happening (because a natural part of life is the death of cells to make way for new ones), I assume you mean something seriously deleterious.
In that case, it's all about storage. An apple that has fallen from the tree will remain intact for a little while before it actually "goes off". In that case, it won't be apoptosis per se it will be more to do with bacterial degradation that is the deciding factor as to how long it will last outside of a fridge/freezer/sterilised tin.
Outside of this, I'm assuming you mean when does the fruit actually "die"? Or at what point do they lose enough of their nutrients to become useless?
If you could clarify what you mean, I'll be more than happy to explain a little more. :) | [
"Programmed cell death in plants has a number of molecular similarities to animal apoptosis, but it also has differences, the most obvious being the presence of a cell wall and the lack of an immune system that removes the pieces of the dead cell. Instead of an immune response, the dying cell synthesizes substances... |
how does the bond market work? | Say I sell you a bond for $100. It's a contract that says in exactly 5 years, bring the contract back to me and I will give you $150.
Sounds like a good deal to you because that's more than what you would get investing your money in the bank so you take it.
Then after a year, the bank's interest rate jumps up a bit. You think that if they stay that way, you could make more than $150 by putting $100 in the bank instead.
You are allowed to sell that bond to someone else and they can then bring it back to me on the same date we agreed on and I'll give them the $150 instead. So you find someone to buy the bond and they are willing to give you $105 for it (they only have to wait 4 years to cash it in now).
They hold onto it for a year and then the banks drop their interest rates a lot. Lower than they were 2 years ago. So you go and see the person that you sold the bond to and ask if you can buy it back. But now because you can't get much money in interest from the bank you still think it's worthwhile to pay $120 to buy the bond back.
TL;DR a bond is kind of like a fixed rate investment which can be traded. | [
"The bond market (also debt market or credit market) is a financial market where participants can issue new debt, known as the primary market, or buy and sell debt securities, known as the secondary market. This is usually in the form of bonds, but it may include notes, bills, and so on.\n",
"The bonds are sold t... |
why is it that whenever i'm wearing my glasses, the edges of all objects are surrounded with a very thin blue edge on one side and a very thin orange edge on the other? | It's explained in [this recent post.](_URL_0_) | [
"The glass is coated with, or has encased within, a thin and almost-transparent layer of metal (usually aluminium). The result is a mirrored surface that reflects some light and is penetrated by the rest. Light always passes equally in both directions. However, when one side is brightly lit and the other kept dark,... |
What causes solar flares to be "sucked" back to where they originated rather than fall to the sun's surface? | The flares are made of plasma (charged particles), which are subject to magnetic fields at the surface of the sun. These fields can have exotic looking shapes, causing the hot and radiating plasma to form such wonderful bows and branches. | [
"Breakdown of ideal MHD (in the form of magnetic reconnection) is known to be the likely cause of solar flares. The magnetic field in a solar active region over a sunspot can store energy that is released suddenly as a burst of motion, X-rays, and radiation when the main current sheet collapses, reconnecting the fi... |
During World War II, were trhere any accounts of people on the ground being accidentally killed by 50-cal rounds being fired from bombers defending themselves from fighters? | A while back [I answered a similar question, about civilians hit by falling flak.](_URL_0_)
While it's not *entirely* the same, I think it's appropriate. | [
"During World War II, from May 22 to 27, 1940, artillery fire brought British and German soldiers into conflict in the Risquons-Tout district. 15 British soldiers, 10 German soldiers and 5 civilians were killed in the incident.\n",
"During the Second World War, there is a recorded incident of a Lancaster of the R... |
what is money dumping and why is it illegal? | 'Dumping' has a few different definitions in economics, finance and trade, esp in an international context. Can you be a little (or a lot) more specific? | [
"Illegal dumping involves the unauthorized disposal of numerous types of waste. Typical materials dumped include building materials from construction sites, such as drywall, roofing shingles, lumber, brick, concrete, and siding. Other frequently dumped materials include automobile parts, household appliances, house... |
I found this on a beach in Japan. What is it?? | [Cuttlebone from a Cuttlefish](_URL_0_) | [
"The name most likely comes from an Old Dutch phrase, \"Fried Landt Flaak\", meaning free, flat land. Its public white sandy beach is one of the longest on the island. This public beach attracts local families, tourists and visitors throughout the year. Its lagoon is protected by the surrounding coral reefs. The be... |
Ecologists of reddit: What effect does a warm winter have on birds and other wildlife? | In Europe there have been documented cases of birds arriving too late for the emergence of their insect prey because spring is arriving on average a few weeks earlier. The birds have not yet adapted behaviourally to this change and so miss out on the early spring feast. This can effect their ability to produce offspring or store enough food for the migration back in the fall. Other birds have begun to arrive earlier (they are adapting) - but an unexpected cold snap could negatively effect the population.
So in a way, the timing arrival of spring can have huge effects on [bird migrations](_URL_1_), especially if insect species emerge early - your reasoning is sound. But many other factors influence migration as well including environmental and abiotic queues (degree of sunlight/temperature) from where they are coming from (their southern habitat is also effected by climate change). Because many different species disperse to a wide variety of southern habitats in the winter, they may time their return differently, but because climate change will effect the severity and timing of these environmental queues not all bird species will be effected in the same way at the same time. This would make it difficult to predict the changes to a whole ecosystem - probably easier to look at each individual species.
Here is an article on [european bird migration and climate change](_URL_3_)
Here is another that [looks at the effects of climate change on migration](_URL_4_)
and [another](_URL_5_)
and [another](_URL_2_)
Here is an article that is more [general](_URL_0_)
There are so many articles out there however most have to do with european bird migrations. | [
"A secondary aim is to research the climatic effects of the expected changes in the ecosystem. Here the key concept is that some of the effects of the large herbivores, such as eradicating trees and shrubs or trampling snow, will result in a stronger cooling of the ground in the winter, leading to less thawing of p... |
Is terminal velocity higher on a planet with more mass/ gravity? | If that's the only thing that changes, then yes. Terminal velocity is when the deceleration from drag is equal to the acceleration from gravity. The drag depends on the shape and texture of the object as well as the thickness and composition of the atmosphere. Gravity just comes from how massive the planet is and how close you are to it. | [
"The terminal velocity of a falling body occurs during free fall when the force due to gravity is exactly balanced by the force due to air resistance, such that the body experiences zero acceleration. The formula for terminal velocity (where buoyancy in air is negligible) is given by the thrust\n",
"Terminal velo... |
If I shot a tornado with a gun, could the right circumstance allow for the bullet to be absorbed? | What does "absorbed" mean in this context? | [
"BULLET::::- Cross Tornado: With a pair of high-powered boosters fired on each side of the body, Dangaioh spins at high speeds while holding the Dangai Blades high. Then launches itself towards the opponent either punching a hole through or slice them in half. This attack it often performed while having the Burning... |
can you create a flashlight bright enough to shine completely through a person? | No. The light is shining through the translucent parts of your finger - not the bone. The visible spectrum can't go through bones. | [
"People working in hazardous areas with significant concentrations of flammable gases or dusts, such as mines, engine rooms of ships, chemical plants or grain elevators, use \"non-incendive\", \"intrinsically safe\" or \"explosion proof\" flashlights constructed so that any spark in the flashlight is not likely to ... |
if an old person gets a lung transplant from a teenager who dies, can they live a longer life because the organ is younger? (longer than say if they got a persons lungs who was older) same goes for a heart or liver etc. | If we're talking about flawless transplant with no problems, then yes, people with younger organs have a certain chance of living longer. For example, if you have a new heart. But don't forget that your brain and the rest of your body will still be old and prone to various failure. And you can't transplant your conciousness to another brain. | [
"Older people (who are generally too frail to undergo bone marrow transplants), and people who are unable to find a good bone marrow match, undergoing immune suppression have five-year survival rates of up to 35%.\n",
"Murnaghan's parents argued that she needed a lung transplant or else she would die in a matter ... |
what does bias mean? | When the word bias comes up, most of the time it refers to defective judgement.
For example, you will often see people in gaming communities hate one game over another. I like BF3 rather than COD. If a person came to me and asked what the best FPS is for a new player, I would insist on them starting and staying with BF3. Yet, in reality, COD is actually better for beginners.
I will lie to people, not on purpose, about how inferior COD is because of my bias. You can show me evidence that proves COD is better, but I will deny it just because of how attached to BF3 I am. | [
"Bias is defined as prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. Bias can be seen as the overarching definition of stereotype and prejudice, in that it is how we associate usually negative traits to a specific group of people. Our “imp... |
passports and traveling abroad | Passports are known to have existed as early as 450 BCE, so it's not a new thing. They've probably been a thing as long as there have been separate nations. | [
"For travel abroad, a passport is almost always required. There are a few minor exceptions to this rule; required documentation to travel among North American countries is subject to the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative , such as the NEXUS programme and the Enhanced Drivers License programme implemented by a fe... |
why don't doctors just run all the possible tests on a patient (including the full-body ct scan) to get the right diagnosis and instead discuss the possible diseases with their colleagues? | E. g. in my country, there are four PET/CT cameras. The population is around 5 and a half million. | [
"A full-body scan has the potential to identify disease (e.g. cancer) in early stages, and early identification can improve the success of curative efforts. Controversy arises from the use of full-body scans in the screening of patients who have no signs or symptoms suggestive of a disease. As with any test that sc... |
Hello, today my friend and I were in the gym and we were curious if ancient warriors or everyday ancient peoples had defined muscle definition (abs, pecs, striations, etc etc). | Simply put, yes. Ancient art provides a lot of evidence of accurate anatomical awareness of muscle development. Ancient warriors were expected to be able to carry, even run in some seriously heavy armor, cover long distances on foot, and did not eat fatty diets, so some muscular definition would only be natural.
Perhaps a more interesting aspect is the ideology of muscles in the ancient world.
Check out a statue like the Farnese Hercules. The guy is seriously muscled (the exact reality of the anatomy and proportions has drawn a lot of critical interest). But Hercules is kind of the dumb jock of ancient myth. He's meant to look strong, but not sexy.
The Apollo Belvedere shows another type and a phenomenon in depicting anatomy that can be seen in pottery, etc of a much earlier date. He's fit, but his arms aren't very muscular. Instead the focus is on his lower body with that oh so sexy v-line and super well defined legs.
Too much muscularity usually meant that you had to labor for a living, not a sexy trait, while seriously nice legs meant you ran a lot which was a leisure/sport activity. So you're more likely to see ancient art depict the more idealized/aristocratic body type, even if that did not reflect what people really looked like. | [
"In the ancient sources, training is often discussed. However, details about how the training of runners compared to the training of other types of athletes are not clearly addressed. In ancient Greece, athletes might not have been as specialized as they are today. It is likely that a single athlete would have trai... |
How did the romans make their Scutum shields? | The scutum was the primary shield of the Roman legionnaire during the late republic and principate/early empire, yet it was not of uniform make or shape across the empire or through the period as a whole. Thus there was a some variation between different makes.
For much of the republican period oval scutums appears to have been the the norm for legionnaires. These were large affairs with curved sides so as to "wrap" around the soldier's body. Polybius describes them as measuring 120 by 75 cm and being made out of laminated wood, two layers thick. The outer surface would be covered with canvas and calfskin, while the edges and the centre boss were protected by iron.
The only known example of such a shield was found at Kasr el-Harit in Egypt, and is largely similar to Polybius' description. It measures 128 by 63,5 cm and was made out of three layers of birch wood strips (inner and outer layers of wide and horizontal strips, with a middle layer of narrower and vertical strips in between - for a total thickness of 1,2 cm at the centre and just under 1 cm at the edges). The Kars shield was covered in wool felt, and had a wooden lining and boss, nailed to the shield proper. Behind the boss there was a horisontal hand grip, by which the user would hold the shield. There is no evidence of any metal covering or lining. A reconstruction suggests that the shield would have been very heavy, at approx. 10 kilos.
Although oval legionary scutums never entirely went out of use (fragments of an oval and scutum-sized leather shield cover has been excavated at a legionary fortress at Caerleon in Wales), they were replaced as the most common type by a rectangular variant from the early principate onwards. A rectangular scutum dated to the third century AD has been found at Dura Europos in Syria. The shield measured 102 by 83 cm, and - like the el-Harit example - was made up of three layers of wooden strips, fastened together with glue. It was covered with red dyed kid leather on the front and back, and had a uniform thickness of 5 mm. The Dura Europos scutum had no boss, but was held by a horisontal wooden handle, glued to the back. Like the el-Harit scutum there was no evidence of any metal layer or lining, but a leather strip had been wrapped around the edges of the shield. A reconstruction of the Dura scutum weighed in at 5,5 kg.
There is also a single surviving example of an auxiliary scutum. This was found at Doncaster in England, and dated to the first century AD. It was flat and had straight sides, with a curved top and bottom. The shield board measured 125 by 64 cm. It was also probably made from three layers of glued wood, and had a uniform thickness of 10 mm. The shield had an iron boss, placed slightly above the centre, with an 80 cm long reinforcing iron bar placed vertically behind the back of the shield. This bar curved outward behind the boss, forming a handle by which the shield could be held. Like the Dura scutum, the Doncaster shield was covered in leather on both sides, and lacked any evidence of a metal lining. A reconstruction of the Doncaster shield came in at 9 kg, but the design was well balanced, making it easier to carry than the weight would otherwise suggest.
Although neither the el-Harit, not Dura scutum had metal bindings of any kind, the remains of such are relatively common on roman military archaeological sites, suggesting that the intact shields might be an exception in this regard, rather than a rule.
Thus we appear to have sufficient evidence - both archaeological and documentary - to say that a scutum during this period would have been made of two or three layers of wood (more would likely have made the shield too heavy for practical use), which were glued together in lamination. It had a single hand grip, the most common type of which appears to have been horisontal. It was covered in leather front and back. Likewise, its edges were protected either by leather or by metal. In the centre most shields would have had an iron or wooden boss. Altogether, making such a shield appears to have been an elaborate process, but not one requiring excessive skill - at least not for the basic design. Wooden strips would have been glued together, and then probably bent over a frame to provide uniform curvature. The shield would then have been covered with leather, possibly backed by textile, while the centre and edges would have been reinforced by fixing - either by glue or by nails - of a boss and metal or leather linings.
**Sources**
* Goldsworthy, Adrian Keith; The Roman Army at War 100 BC-AD 200; Clarendon Press, 1996. | [
"The scutum (; plural \"scuta\"; ) was a type of shield used among Italic peoples in antiquity, and then by the army of ancient Rome starting about the fourth century BC. The Romans adopted it when they switched from the military formation of the \"hoplite\" phalanx of the Greeks to the formation with \"maniples\".... |
'kony 2012' seeming to grab the whole world then around a month later all went quiet | Because they didn't really offer a follow up outside of "share this video". And Kony was being dealt with, most people just didn't know about it. It was like people saying "McVeigh 2012! WE gotta catch Timothy McVeigh before he strikes again!". | [
"Unfortunately, Wonderking has been shut down because the staff of Ndoorsgames decided that there was not enough time to be given to the game in order to give it justice. With bugs and hackers running freely, Wonderking was shut down in late December. They announced that they would reopen it once they fixed it in t... |
why is love so important for human beings? | Two reasons:
1) Humans are social animals. Having someone to care for and someone to care for you is historically essential to our survival.
2) People confuse lust and love. Just as an addict convinces himself he doesn't have a problem, so too do the horny convince themselves they are in love. The desire to mate is also essential to our survival, but the selection of a mate in modern times is more sophisticated than just sex. | [
"Evolutionary psychology has attempted to provide various reasons for love as a survival tool. Humans are dependent on parental help for a large portion of their lifespans compared to other mammals. Love has therefore been seen as a mechanism to promote parental support of children for this extended time period. Fu... |
if cadence watches helped reddit to pay 19.67 of server time since 2010 thru ads, why did reddit made the gold campaign to pay its server? | If reddit ran on a single server, then 19 years of time would cover them for, well, 19 years.
If reddit ran on 19 servers, then 19 years of server time would cover them for a year.
So, it's really a matter of how many servers reddit uses to serve this rather large user base. I guarantee it's not one. | [
"The cataclysmic rise in gold prices in 1974 had grave consequences for the watch exporting industry. Between 1970 and 1974 the price of gold rose from 4,850 to 18,000 francs and the value of the US dollar against the Swiss currency plummeted by up to 40%. As a result, the price of watch exports rose by as much as ... |
what are the duties of military personnel stationed in peaceful countries. | There are lots of things to do around the base like maintaining equipment and routine training. There are hospitals to run, jeeps to clean, and paperwork to fill out.
However their main duties, i.e. the reason they are there is first place, is to be ready in case something happens. Something may happen that at least a few of them need to be mobilized at an hours notice. Most of the time it is to help with some sort of disaster but in theory they could be the front line for a war with North Korea.
That might seem very unlikely but the fact that they are there and that they are ready is a large part of the reason that such a war is unlikely. | [
"Its military duties include preserving and protecting national security, state, property, public peace, and public order, and assisting other security forces in case of emergency, civil unrest, war; repressing riots; reinforcing martial law and mobilization; fighting and apprehending suspected criminals, terrorist... |
What is the white stuff inside pimples? What it's made out of, why we have it, and why does it exit in this way? | A pimple is an infection. Bacterial infections begin with a bacterial pathogen and an inflammatory response to the pathogen. For pimples, anaerobic bacteria colonize a hair follicle and consume the sebum produced by sebaceous glands. This forms lipid byproducts which irritate the surrounding area. This inflammatory reaction recruits immune cells called neutrophils (a type of WBC). Neutrophils come in and dump bleach on the bacteria. As neutrophils die, they accumulate and form what we call pus or the “white stuff”. It only has one immediate way out; through the hair follicle to the skin surface. That’s why it exits that way.
Edit: correction about sebaceous glands (not sweat glands)
Edit2: I’m getting a lot of questions about the one way out. Added that exit to the skin surface is the only immediate way out. After a few days the pimple will resolve following absorption back into the body. | [
"It is characterized by a coating or individual patches of pseudomembranous white slough that can be easily wiped away to reveal erythematous (reddened), and sometimes minimally bleeding, mucosa beneath. These areas of pseudomembrane are sometimes described as \"curdled milk\", or \"cottage cheese\". The white mate... |
Since earth is constantly moving, i.e. rotating around the sun, what prevents satellites from drifting away from or slamming into earth? | Because they are gravitationally bound to the Earth and the Earth's relative motion to the Sun isn't important since the Earth is far enough away from the Sun that such orbits can be stable. More generally a common feature of three body orbits is the exchange of momentum in such a way to eject one of the bodies. Luckily for us, this isn't the case and certain 3 body configurations are stable.
However, orbits that are sufficiently far away, or objects that orbit the Sun *with* the Earth need to take into account both motions which manifest as Lagrangian points:
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With that in mind, because the Earth-Moon-Satellite is a 3 body system, there are very interesting orbits that you can have:
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"To an observer on Earth, a satellite in a geostationary orbit appears motionless, in a fixed position in the sky. This is because it revolves around the Earth at Earth's own angular velocity (one revolution per sidereal day, in an equatorial orbit).\n",
"Orbital planes of satellites are perturbed by the non-sphe... |
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