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how are websites able to sell anabolic steroids online when they are a schedule iii drug? | Its either fake, or they ship it from say mexico, off it gets caught by customs there isn't much the US can do to catch them. If it didn't get caught, enjoy your possibly fake steroids. | [
"In the U.S., Canada, and Europe, illicit steroids are purchased just like any other illegal drug. Dealers are able to obtain the steroids from a number of sources. Illegal anabolic steroids are sometimes sold at gyms, competitions, and through the mail, but may also be obtained through pharmacists, veterinarians, ... |
would lab grown meat eliminate the risk of certain diseases? | Not unless the lab growth process is somehow flawed.
Kuru and mad cow are diseases caused by [prions](_URL_1_). Prions are misfolded proteins; I ELI5'd them in a previous comment [here](_URL_0_). They're associated with cannibalism because eating the brain of a prion-infected person infects you with the same prion disease.
Simply being a cannibal doesn't mean you're going to get kuru (for example, the men of the cannibal tribes famous for kuru didn't often get the disease, because they ate the muscles while the women ate the brains). So eating lab-grown human meat won't give you kuru simply because it's human meat; it would have to have prions in it.
On the other hand, it is possible that they develop a flawed procedure for growing lab-grown meat, that as the proteins grow some of them misfold into prions. That would mean a risk of a prion disease like kuru. But I would hope that such a flaw would be identified and fixed before the procedure gets FDA approval. | [
"In December 2006, he disputed a report by \"Consumer Reports\" in which 83% of chickens they tested were infected with campylobacter and/or salmonella bacteria, noting that the sample of 500 chickens tested was \"very small.\" In February 2007, Richard Raymond ordered stepped-up inspections at some meat and poultr... |
How often did bar fights actually happen in the old west? | It is not possible to quantify this or to give a satisfactory answer. After all, how would we answer the question, how often do bar fights occur in the West today? Where - Tacoma? Phoenix? San Francisco? Denver? Each place has its own profile, and even then, there is a world of difference between a posh hotel bar, a singles pick-up bar, a biker bar, etc. Whatever generalization we arrived at would create the wrong impression and not apply universally - within even one community let alone a region so diverse and large.
That said, there was clearly a lot of romanticism about bar fights in Wild West saloons, and this was not something invented for the twentieth-century film and television industry (where "Westerns" seemed to always have an obligatory bar fight). [Here is a portrait of a bar fight](_URL_0_) dating to 1863: travel writer and artist, J. Ross Browne gave us his impression of the "Cozy Home" saloon, with the charming caption, "Home for the boys." This appeared in Harper's Weekly, a national magazine, but he was clearly pitching his portrait of Virginia City in its earliest days to a nation that already had a stereotypical image in mind when it came to the Wild West and its violence. Some of this was grounded in the fact that the West - particularly the Intermountain Mining West - was predominantly young, male, and single, and when a lot of single young men are drinking in a confined place, violence can result. Still, very few people go to a bar with the hope of getting in a fight, having their face smashed in - or better yet - hoping to be stabbed or shot. Most of the time, the Wild West was a quiet place, but violence is always celebrated more than peace in literature and in any form of media. | [
"The pub was the location for Courts leet and baron on behalf of Bucklebury manor, and was often part of the Chapel Row Fair. In 1790, the sons of George III attended a prize fight there between \"Hooper\", one of Lord Barrymore's men, and \"Big Ben Brain\". The bout lasted almost three-and-a-half hours and 180 rou... |
As someone who knows very little world history what are some necessary books that must be read to have a good grasp of human events in history? | I'd personally recommend 'what on earth happened?' by Christopher Lloyd for someone who knows very little but 'History' by Adam Hart Davis for a more in depth history | [
"Written from prison, where he had no recourse to reference books or a library but his personal notes, \"Glimpses of World History\" contains the history of humankind from 6000 BC to the time of writing of the book. It covers the rise and fall of great empires and civilizations from Greece and Rome to China and Wes... |
What makes safety razors less likely to give you in-grown hairs than the conventional multi-bladed razors? | This is the most relevant /r/wicked_edge thread I could find: _URL_0_
It looks there is little to no scientific research on the matter, and that the suggestion that ingrown hairs are more common with cartridges is only anecdotal. | [
"Straight razors are also much easier to clean and can handle tougher shaving tasks, such as longer facial hair, than modern multi-blade razors, which tend to trap shaving debris between their tightly packed blades and are easily clogged, even with relatively short stubble.\n",
"Still others argue that straight r... |
How was earth made? | Well ok, first the leading scientific theory.
About 5 billion years ago a mass of dust and gas reached a density and heat that allowed for fusion of hydrogen, giving birth to our sun. Leftover dust and gas was left circling the new star and began to bond together, first thanks to static electricity, then thanks to gravity as clumps began to get larger.
Most of the material in this debris cloud was to become Jupiter, with the left over lighter materials becoming the gas and ice giants (there is some debate about this based on observations in other systems, but let's not complicate things). Heavier material stayed close to the center and formed the inner rockier planets.
As these rocks became bigger, pressure and heat plus constant bombardment by other debris kept the planets molten. At this point there may have been 100 planets, but they were constantly crashing into each other.
About 4.5 billion years, a Mars sized planet, Thea, crashed into the young Earth. This had two effects. One our iron core fused with Thea's giving us a larger than normal core (for our size), while a sizable chunk of debris went into orbit and coalesced into our moon.
After several hundreds of millions of years, things calmed down and the surface of the planet cooled to form a crust, while water from bombarding asteroids eventually formed the oceans.
But...here's the thing. You can't debate creation on any scientific basis. Any evidence you bring against the agency of an omnipotent being is useless, because He can just make things appear that way, or manipulate events so things happen just as I said, but He was behind it cause He was bored with just calling things into existence.
However, because of this, Creation (and it's branches) cannot be considered "science". See, in order for a theory to be valid it must meet a few basic requirements.
It must be observable.
It must be reproducible.
It must be falsifiable.
This last one is key. There needs to be the possibility of proving it is false and as I said, you can't prove anything false when you have omnipotence on the table. At that point, it's philosophy.
So really, rather than hitting with them facts, point out that their theory is philosophical and not scientific by its very nature. | [
"How the Earth Was Made is a documentary television series produced by Pioneer Productions for the History channel. It began as a two-hour special exploring the geological history of Earth, airing on December 16, 2007. Focusing on different geologic features of the Earth, the series premiered on February 10, 2009, ... |
How do paleontologists determine whether an extinct mammal species was a placental mammal or a marsupial? | Absolutely, there are bony features which can distinguish placental mammals and marsupials. If you have the skull, for example, the "hard palate" is generally quite different in marsupials than placental mammals, so it can give an indication of origin. For example, a [side by side comparison](_URL_0_) of the Thylacine (Tasmanian wolf, a marsupial) and wolf shows many functional similarities, but the sphenoid (hard palate) is quite different. The functional similarity is due to convergent evolution, but key differences remain. | [
"This is a list of the mammal species recorded in the Canary Islands, Spain. Since the Osorian shrew (\"Crocidura osorio\") was proven to be actually a population of introduced European greater white-toothed shrew (\"C. russula\") the Canarian shrew, \"C. canariensis\" is believed to be the only surviving native te... |
why can't you use a co2 extinguisher for paper fires? | _URL_0_
"Carbon Dioxide is a non-flammable gas that extinguishes fire by displacing oxygen, or taking away the
oxygen element of the fire triangle. The carbon dioxide is also very cold as it comes out of the
extinguisher, so it cools the fuel as well. CO2s may be ineffective at extinguishing Class A fires
because they may not be able to displace enough oxygen to successfully put the fire out. Class A
materials may also smolder and re-ignite." | [
"Carbon dioxide can be used to extinguish flames by flooding the environment around the flame with the gas. It does not itself react to extinguish the flame, but starves the flame of oxygen by displacing it. Some fire extinguishers, especially those designed for electrical fires, contain liquid carbon dioxide under... |
what protects the united states from becoming a dictatorship? | Theoretically, there are checks and balances on the President and term limits that prevent a dictatorship. In reality, when you reach the point where the President can lie without consequences, pack the government with cronies, silence dissenting opinions, and convince people to distrust in basic facts, then we have reached the state of a *de facto* dictatorship. | [
"Dictatorship means nothing more nor less than authority untrammelled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules whatever, and based directly on force. The term 'dictatorship' \"has no other meaning but this\".\n",
"Dictatorship means nothing more nor less than authority untrammelled by any laws, absolutel... |
If the world came to an agreement to destroy all nuclear weapons, is there a safe way to even do it? | Burn the fuel in nuclear reactors, a la the [Megatons to Megawatts Program](_URL_0_). Certain reactor designs are more efficient for this, but downblended weapons-grade material can be burned (in small quantities) in any conventional commercial reactor. For instance, plutonium weapons can be turned into [MOX fuel](_URL_1_). | [
"In 2011, the Council of Delegates of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement appealed to all states \"to pursue in good faith and conclude with urgency and determination negotiations to prohibit the use of and completely eliminate nuclear weapons through a legally binding international agreement, bas... |
This Weeks Theme - "Myths, Legends, and Folklore" | Ooh, this is fun! Can I suggest some future topics? I'd like to suggest 'Sub Saharan Africa' because its history is so often overlooked, but it's also a broad topic at the same time. | [
"Legend is a 1985 American dark fantasy adventure film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, Tim Curry, David Bennent, Alice Playten, Billy Barty, Cork Hubbert, and Annabelle Lanyon. The film revolves around Jack, a pure being who must stop the Lord of Darkness who plots to cover the world wit... |
Is there a way to increase brain processing speed? If so, how? | Practice will lead to [automaticity](_URL_0_) in a lot of tasks. Reading is one example where enough practice means not having to do the low-level work of identifying individual characters, their associated sounds, stringing them into words, overcoming inconsistencies in word-sound rules, etc. | [
"Speed of processing is another theory that has been raised to explain working memory deficits. As a result of various studies he has completed examining this topic, Salthouse argues that as we age our speed of processing information decreases significantly. It is this decrease in processing speed that is then resp... |
How much has the Netherlands changed geographically since antiquity, and what drove the local population to build dykes and levees instead of relocating? | The low countries were settled because, at first, they were not very low and were excellent farmland. They could be drained rather easily with shallow ditches. As farming continued, and drainage, there was soil subsidence, which created a need for more drainage, but now also sluices and simple dams: like a swinging gate across the mouth of a river that would swing shut as the tide rose, to prevent flooding upstream. By the mid 13th c. much of the region had various encircling dams, drains, sluices, and gates, and there was yet more subsidence. One estimate has been that the land has dropped , in places, more than five meters. So, the answer to the second part of your question is: they didn't relocate because they were able to solve a series of smaller flooding problems over time, instead of having to build immediately a huge flood control system. This has continued into the present day: you can see how extensive the present flood control efforts have become with the [Delta Works](_URL_1_)
This effort to control the "waterwolf" should not be confused however with the huge Zuiderzee project of the 20th c., a systematic damming, draining, and reclaiming of land from the North Sea. While Wikipedia is not a great source, [here](_URL_0_) it does have a very useful map with dates, showing the complex timeline, areas drained, etc.
[TeBrake, *Taming the Waterwolf: Hydraulic Engineering and Water Management in the Netherlands During the Middle Ages*](_URL_2_) Technology and Culture Vol 43 No. 3. ( 2002) | [
"The Netherlands has a coastline that is constantly changing with erosion caused by wind and water. The Dutch people inhabiting the region had at first built primitive dikes to protect their settlements from the sea. In the northern parts of the Netherlands sea levels fell exposing new land at a rate of 5–10 meters... |
What determines the direction that spiral galaxies spin? Do they all spin the same way? | Whether they appear to spin clockwise or counterclockwise just depends on which side of them you are looking at.
| [
"In spiral galaxies, the spiral arms do have the shape of approximate logarithmic spirals, a pattern that can be theoretically shown to result from a disturbance in a uniformly rotating mass of stars. Like the stars, the spiral arms rotate around the center, but they do so with constant angular velocity. The spiral... |
Does pregnancy prolong the time before a woman gets menopause? | Eggs won't be released during preganancy, but they are constantly being recruited, so your 'left behind to go bad' hypothesis is closer to the truth. The female cycle is essentially very wasteful. Follicles which contain a single egg are constantly recruited in batches throughout the cycles. One of eggs will become mature, while the others won't and just play a support role. If that chosen egg becomes mature at the right point in the cycle, ie the hormonal balance is right and the woman is not pregnant, then it will be ovulated. Otherwise the egg will be reabsorbed. As eggs are constantly being recruited there will be one ready to be ovulated when the time is right, but the vast majority will never be ovulated. The same process occurs throughout pregnancy, and as the hormones are never right for ovulation, the eggs are simply wasted. This is why we are born with millions of eggs but don't have millions of cycles before menopause. So pregnancy shouldnt effect timing of menopause unless their is another mechanism beside egg release. | [
"Menopause occurs during a woman's midlife (between ages 48 and 55). During menopause, hormonal production by the ovaries is reduced, eventually causing a permanent cessation of the primary function of the ovaries, particularly the creation of the uterine lining (period). This is considered the end of the fertile p... |
Why did the Spanish Empire have difficulty subduing and then maintaining control of the Netherlands? | The Spanish empire faced three big problems in the 80 years war; geography, finance, and foreign military intervention.
Break out a map and you may notice something a little funny, Spain does not border the Netherlands. Spain used two methods to get troops and money to the Netherlands, sea and land.
The land route was called the Spanish Road and was by far the more important of the two methods. Spain possessed territory in northern Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire was ostensibly under the Habsburg dynasty. The ideal route was that soldiers would be recruited in Spain, then shipped to northern Italy for garrison duty. After a little bit of time acclimating to the military life in garrison duty, these soldiers would be ordered to the Netherlands. The exact routes traveled along the eastern border of France and the western border of the Holy Roman Empire, and through several small, independent political territories.
Since the HRE was ostensibly Habsburg, access via its territory would seem an easy issue. However, the HRE was incredibly politically fragmented and what should have been guaranteed access to the Netherlands was actually more like something out of a Katy Perry song, hot and cold. Specifically, the Electors of Palatine and the dukes of Zweibrucken (both part of the HRE) were incredibly hostile to the Habsburgs. These guys routinely harassed Spanish soldiers, confiscated their weapons, stole their money, and in general were majors pains in the ass. Their activity made the use of the Rhine to move troops into the Netherlands a haphazard affair for the Spanish. Because of this, the Spanish usually went a little more west and passed through Lorraine. Spain's access to the various territories needed to move troops waxed and waned over the years as various powers decided to intervene, or were distracted by other concerns and unable to impeded Spain.
Movement by sea was never a reliable option for Spain. In 1568, the English decided to end their alliance with Spain. With England, France, and the Netherlands hostile to Spain, movement by sea was impossible. Almost every attempt by Spain to move troops or money by boat to the Netherlands ended in disaster.
I think it's a bit of an understatement to say that Spain's finances were as messy and confusing as their land routes. You have to remember that imperial Spain was more akin to a feudal state than to what we think of as a modern nation, or even the Roman empire. As an essentially feudal lord, the king of Spain did not have powers of general taxation. Instead, the war was considered a personal matter of the king and so he was personally responsible for raising the funds necessary. He possessed the sole political right to allow the raising of troops, but actually funding them was an entirely different matter. The the king of Spain could raise money in four different ways. The first was in rents and tolls on the use of his land. The second was through special project, such as the extraction of wealth from the New World. The third was by taking out loans. And the fourth was by convincing wealthy Spanish nobles to become personally involved and contribute their own wealth and credit to the affair. Going into even a little detail on these methods would require a huge amount of writing, so I'm only going to touch briefly on number three, loans. In order to actually move money to the Netherlands to pay soldiers, Spain could either ship the required gold and silver themselves, or they could take out short term loans called "asientos". The asiento was basically an agreement by a banker to provide money in the Netherlands in exchange for being paid money in Spain. However, Spain was never able to pay back the asientos in full, and frequently defaulted. This wiped out Spanish bankers and forced the king to go international in order to obtain loans. In the end, Spain destroyed their creditors one by one, and as their access to credit plummeted, so did Spain's ability to finance their army.
Foreign military intervention was the last major factor that effected Spain's ability to wage war in the Netherlands. Simply put, the 80 years' war was not the only thing on Spain's plate. Spain was the principle power behind checking Ottoman influence in the Mediterranean, as Venice had long ago lost the ability to stand against the Ottomans unaided. The Dutch frequently reached out to the Ottomans and encouraged them to create problems for the Spanish, thus diverting men and money that would otherwise fund Spain's war in the Netherlands. France was another problem. During the first half of the 80 years' war, France was consumed by their own internal problems. However, this did not stop them from interfering whenever possible with movement along the Spanish Road. However, once France got past their wars of religion, they began a unified effort to cripple the Spanish Empire. One problem was that since France and Spain were both catholic, they were supposed to be allies. However, the secular lust for power, overrode any loyalties due to religion. The French contributed heavily to the protestants in the 30 years' war in an attempt to interfere with Spain. France eventually abandoned all pretense and directly fielded armies against the Habsburgs in the HRE and the Netherlands.
In short, Spain faced conflict in every direction and they lacked the internal organization or foreign alliance necessary to solve their problems one at a time. They simply had to much to do at one time and not enough resources to do it. Coupled with the incredibly awkward geography impeding their access to the Netherlands, and it's a testament to Spanish obstinence that they managed to fight on as long as they did.
Sources:
"The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road: 1567-1659" by Geoffry Parker. This is my primary resource since the book is literally about the question you asked. It's a bit dry in places, and it assumes that the reader is fairly familiar with European politics and geography of that time period, but it has lots of good details.
"The 30 Years' War" by C.V Wedgwood. The final 30 years of the 80 Years' War overlapped with the 30 Years' War, and while the two wars started as different wars, they essentially ended as the same war. Wedgwood does an excellent job of describing the general moods and feelings of the different political players as time went on.
| [
"Following the 1580 Iberian Union, Portugal was throughout most of the period under Habsburg rule, and the Habsburg Philip II of Spain was battling the Dutch Revolt. Prior to the union of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns, Portuguese merchants used the Low Countries as a base for the sale of their spices in norther... |
Why wasn't there a large number of immigrants from France, Portugal and Spain to the U.S.? | One simple explanation is just that those countries, Spain, France and Portugal all had significant empires in the New World and Africa- colonies filled with people who already spoke their language and where being a citizen of the mother country brought huge advantages. There was plenty of emigration from those countries, just not to the United States. | [
"The US, especially in the North, had received a large influx of European immigrants in the 1850s because of people leaving Europe to avoid the ongoing wars and rebellions there. Europe had been in the midst of a pro-republican transformation with people such as Garibaldi, from Italy.\n",
"During the first half o... |
Is the gravitational force the only force that distorts space-time and if so, why is that ? | In the mathematical framework of general relativity, gravitational force doesn't distort spacetime, it *is* the distortion of spacetime. It isn't the case that the existence of the force does the distorting.
To use a strained analogy, the question is a little like asking 'is swimming the only way to propel yourself through water using the movement of your limbs, and if so, why is that?'. This doesn't make sense because swimming *is* the process of propelling yourself through water using the movement of your limbs, not a way to make that happen.
~~I'm not sure if we can describe other forces using mathematics similar to that of general relativity.~~ Edit: As localhorst explains below, the theory of gauge fields does this. | [
"These objections were explained by Einstein's theory of general relativity, in which gravitation is an attribute of curved spacetime instead of being due to a force propagated between bodies. In Einstein's theory, energy and momentum distort spacetime in their vicinity, and other particles move in trajectories det... |
Can you "spin" air into a vacuum? | A [turbomolecular pump](_URL_0_) is what you're describing with your first question. They can pump a system down to ultra-high vacuum.
To answer your second question, the answer depends on how good of a vacuum you want, the size of the system, the size of the pump, and the rate that gas is entering. The most simple vacuum systems have leaks all over that allow gas in, but they still achieve low pressure by virtue of having a large pump that pumps enough of it out fast enough to keep the pressure low. | [
"BULLET::::- Cyclonic separation: A vacuum cleaner employing this method is also bagless. It causes intake air to be cycled or spun so fast that most of the dust is forced out of the air and falls into a collection bin. The operation is similar to that of a centrifuge.\n",
"A rotating slotted nozzle inside the si... |
Why do residential buildings use wood frames where as industrial and office buildings use steel? | You can build a home with steel, it's just cheaper to use wood. Depending on the building and its use, fire codes and the structural load limitations of wood demand that steel be used. Before, commercial buildings were mostly made with brick, but we figured out that you could build considerably higher using a steel frame with a skin attached to the exterior. | [
"While the use of timber frames for the construction of 1-2 story buildings is typical in many countries (see: timber framing), antiquated building codes in the United States discouraged wood frame construction in 5-floor buildings or higher for many years. With the advancement of science, construction technologies... |
Why do the British isles have so many castles in comparison to the rest of Europe? | What's the source of that map? At a first glance it seems wildly inaccurate. There are way more castles in France and Austria than listed here (and that are just the places I'm familiar with).
If this is some kind of crowd-managed map, much of the difference might be due to reporting bias. | [
"The motte-and-bailey castle is a particularly northern European phenomenon, most numerous in Normandy and Britain, but also seen in Denmark, Germany, Southern Italy and occasionally beyond. European castles first emerged in the 9th and 10th centuries, after the fall of the Carolingian Empire resulted in its territ... |
how does a camera know when the image is focused? | 3 main ways:
Contrast Detection Auto-Focus (good enough)
Phase Detection Auto-Focus (best)
Laser Auto-Focus (eh)
When the camera picks what the objects it needs to focus on:
Contrast Detection looks for the focus level where there is the most contrast (difference between white and black), as that means there is no blurriness, where they fade into each other.
Phase Detection splits the light into 2+ beams and each beam goes into 2 sensors, and both sensors are focused until they are both "in-phase":
> When the light reaches these two sensors, if an object is in focus, light rays from the extreme sides of the lens converge right in the center of each sensor...Both sensors would have identical images on them, indicating that the object is indeed in perfect focus.
Laser Autofocus is just sonar with light, a beam of light is emitted from the camera and the time is takes for the light to bounce back to the sensor is used to determine the focus. | [
"Due to the fact that the imaging is done at an angle, only a small line of the entire field of view is actually in focus. The line in focus can be moved along the field of view by adjusting the focus. In order to analyze the entire region of interest, the focus must be incrementally moved along the region of inter... |
why are the little "do not attempt" warnings on many commercials necessary? | Many companies are worried that, if a person replicates the events of a commercial and gets injured, they will be sued for having encouraged that behavior. Although the chance anyone would succeed in such a lawsuit is very unlikely, a suit itself is expensive and attracts bad press. The lawyers these companies retain usually advise "better safe than sorry" and encourage piling up the disclaimers. | [
"Reminder and help-seeking ads are often used by drugmakers to bypass the more onerous restrictions (such as the required listing of side effects), or outright prohibitions on product claims advertising, as neither of them are focused on promoting the drug itself. Sometimes, a campaign may mix both of these ads, wi... |
Were Stalins harsh (economic and social) reforms necessary for the military survival of the USSR during the Second World War? | The huge development made Russia unrecognisable from the one before the revolution. The development under the 5 year plans was huge. Pig iron production rose from 0.4 million tonnes in 1922 to 3.5 million tonnes in 1926, and then boomed to 17.7 million tonnes in 1937. Although no other heavy industry was quite as huge growth as iron, electricity featured a 400% growth, coal 300%.
Let's look into this more, production 1918-1923 was very badly affected by the Russian civil war, this especially pulled the industrial workers (who were to become the proletariat, according to Marx, so the most supportive to the communists) into the war. The following policy, NEP caused industrial prices to fall, while agricultural prices to rise, causing the "scissors crisis". This is the period of relative prosperity you are talking about. The Five Year plans were embarked on (for many reasons) to cause huge growth. 80% of the investment was into heavy industry, in the first plan 1928-1932. Huge investment and the fear of being called a "wrecker" if your factory didn't produce the incredibly high targets, and the want to revenge the West after WWI, alongside the fact that a lot of people saw this as a huge chance to move up in the world, In 1913 over 80% of Russians still lived in the "Mir" traditional villages squalid conditions where food wasn't certain. The workers were actually looking forward to the new promised "workers paradise", this leads to the social change you allude to, but also makes productivity skyrocket. The growth also was based on other growth, heavy industry was to build the factories to build the goods for the people, electricity and coal saw huge growth because of this. Huge complexes were built in Magnitogorsk, from a small village to a city of ¼million in 5 years 1932-1937 and just focused on iron production, as well as other metallurgy.
For the huge increase in industrial output meant a colossal increase in military power. Not only did you now have the raw resources to build military equipment, but more importantly, possibly you had the infrastructure in place. The greatest tank is useless without a supply chain, and the train network and electricity devolved especially under the Second FYP allows greater mobility and supply of troops, which was absolutely critical in the winter of 1941.
The soviets built 93,000 aircraft and 79,000 tanks in the years 1939-1945, completely outstripping the Germans, it is popular opinion that pure numerical superiority in air and armour in the Eastern Front won the war. German armour is generally considered superior to Soviet, this is shown by a incredible average of 5 soviet tank losses to 1 German tank lost in 1941.
(Sorry for the poor quality answer, I haven't written one of these before if you are interested Alex Nove and Orlando Figes are great reads, I will also finish this off as it is midnight and I can no longer read my sources and this is causing my awful spelling/English sorry. I know I haven't answered the question yet, that will come) | [
"During the 1930s, Joseph Stalin's Five Year Plans and industrialization drive built the productive base necessary to modernize the Red Army. As the likelihood of war in Europe increased later in the decade, the Soviet Union tripled its military expenditures and doubled the size of its regular forces to match the p... |
Must snipers account for the curvature of the earth when taking long-range shots? | Not really, if the target is within sight then the curvature of the earth won't affect the shot. That said the curvature does affect how far away the horizon is and therefore the longest possible shot from any given position (higher elevation give a further horizon) | [
"A sniper must have the ability to accurately estimate the various factors that influence a bullet's trajectory and point of impact such as: range to the target, wind direction, wind velocity, altitude and elevation of the sniper and the target and ambient temperature. Mistakes in estimation compound over distance ... |
What is the consequence of the energy that is dissipated in tidal current by friction with the seabed? | The friction will slow down the Earth's rotation, as well as cause the Moon to ~~speed up~~ slow down. As a result, the moon slowly drifts away from the Earth (at a relatively insignificant amount) and the Earth's rotation slows infinitesimally.
Edit: The moon steals angular momentum, causing it to have a wider orbit, causing it to slow down | [
"Tidal heating occurs through the tidal friction processes: orbital and rotational energy are dissipated as heat in the crust of an object. In addition, to the extent that tides produce heat along fractures, libration may affect the magnitude and distribution of such tidal shear heating. Tidal dissipation of Encela... |
What was life like aboard the average Liberty Ship or merchant marine ship during WW2? | Pretty miserable, for the most part. The average Liberty Ship wasnt designed for crew comfort, it was made to transport goods and supplies from point A to point B. For the crew, it had a galley (kitchen), berthing(bunk rooms), heads(bathrooms) and a small r & r area. I remember reading a book by a British Merchant Mariner, he described how the galley(kitchen) was in the middle of the ship and the mess(dinning room) was in the rear of the ship, they would have to transport the food on the walkways exposed to the elements, sometimes a wave would hit and there goes dinner for the crew. The crew had to bring their own entertainment. You were there to do a job, steer the boat, man the guns, keep the ship running. here is a good website for more info on this _URL_0_
Now some merchant ships used in the war were nicer then the average Liberty ship. Some were "cruise ships" used to transport men, others were tramp steamers, used to transport men/supplies. Depending on the type of ship you might have more of a easy assignment or a harder assignment. But you need to remember that most of the ships were re fitted with defense weapons and added storage areas. O and the threat of Uboats, being adrift at sea in the life boat or worse without one.
| [
"At the end of World War II, most of the surviving Captains were returned to the US Navy as quickly as possible to reduce the amount payable under the provisions of the Lend-Lease agreement. The last of the Captains returned was \"Hotham\", which in the post-war period served as a floating power station in Singapor... |
why do teachers in high school want essays to be double-spaced when all the essays students have done before have always been single-spaced? | Generally, double-spacing an essay allows an easy margin for teachers to write comments in where they can be placed directly under the words in question (as opposed to putting comments in the side margins, which can be confusing). It can also improve readability for certain essays, especially if unnecessarily verbose language is used or the student spells poorly.
It can *sometimes* be used to check to see if a student has used an "essay-extending" trick like increasing the size of periods by one font point. But as someone who has to grade papers like this: trust me, these tricks aren't going to help you. | [
"BULLET::::- Students usually sit at tables, not desks (usually two at one table), sometimes arranged in a semicircle or another geometric or functional shape. During exams in classrooms, the tables are sometimes arranged in columns with one pupil per table (if permitted by the room's capacities) in order to preven... |
why companies trying to build flying cars when small helicopters already exist? | Helicopters are the most difficult flying machine to learn to fly, by quite a bit. The expectation that you might get 1M people to learn to fly them so you can sell them a vehicle is quite unlikely. The idea of a "flying car" is that it handles the "flying" autonomously, like an RC Drone, so that the person only has to learn to steer it around. That's a product you could sell a million of.
Don't forget AeroMobil and Terrafugia, they've got flying prototypes. | [
"The company came into being as a result of two inventions that allowed for possibility of a small lightweight design for EVS that could be deployed onto small private and commercial aircraft and helicopters.\n",
"BULLET::::- In 2017, GE Aviation revealed that it had used design for additive manufacturing to crea... |
What was the economic structure of biblical times? | Which time period are you wondering about specifically?
"Biblical times" is a little broad and can stretch from the Late Bronze Era to the Roman Empire. | [
"The next year there appeared an economic study of the Bible: \"Institutiones Oeconomicæ ex Sacris Litteris depromptæ\", 543 pages (Lyon, 1627). The author translated into Italian these lessons on the care of one's own household; this translation was a posthumous publication: \"Economia Christiana\", 542 pages (Ven... |
why does a (nonelectric) train theoretically have to be on tracks? | A flat highway or road would require steering. Tracks and rails mean you don’t have to worry about steering the train, just adjusting speed. | [
"Tracks were intended from the outset to utilize a broad gauge of , unusual in the Unites States. Parsons Brinkerhoff - Tutor Bechtel recommended the gauge for better stability and smoother riding; it was not selected for greater safety in high winds when crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, or for faster trains, contr... |
why do games have an unnecessarily large case, compared to the size of a disk? | So the box have more room for print and is more visible in the store. It's all about marketing. | [
"Home console video games come packaged inside of a DVD-style case. Portables use a smaller format, but both are usually larger than the actual game media. Therefore, one may find cases made to hold only the game media, thus saving space and protecting the disks or cartridges from the open environment or improper s... |
if ph is used to measure acidity, why is it named "power of hydrogen"? | Acidity is measured by the presence of Hydrogen ions [H+].
Water [H-O-H] always exists in equilibrium with some of its ions [H+] and [OH-]. When you have an acid or a base mixed in with the water, the balance between the [H+] and the [OH+] will be skewed towards more of one than the other.
pH is defined as the negative logarthm of the [H+] concentration. pH = -log [H+].
Just plain water usually has a pH of 7 ([H+] = 10^(-7) M, [OH-] = 10^(-7) M). An acidic solution will have a lot more [H+] ... but since it is a negative logarithm, then it will have a lower pH. | [
"While \"K\" measures the strength of an acid compound, the strength of an aqueous acid solution is measured by pH, which is an indication of the concentration of hydronium in the solution. The pH of a simple solution of an acid compound in water is determined by the dilution of the compound and the compound's \"K\... |
How are foods, like chocolate, made to be baking stable so they do not melt in the oven? | Chocolate is a bean, that is ground into powder (like coffee) and typically mixed with butter and sugar to make bars of eating chocolate (it also has some natural fats, which can be removed: with the fat in, you have cocao butter). Pure chocolate, that is cocao nibs, basically resembles ground coffee and won't melt. They could mix it with anything that also doesn't melt if they wanted to make it into "bake stable" bars.
Peanut butter is made by roasting peants and sticking them in a food blender with a dash of salt. It will make a thick paste. In order to make it easily spreadable, combine it with oil. I'm not sure exactly what they put into chips to make it solidify as I make my own peanut butter. | [
"To prevent fracturing of the stone by thermal shock, some bakers place the baking stone in a cold oven and heat it over at least 45 minutes, then allow it to cool slowly inside the oven after switching it off. Because of the possibility of rapid temperature change, baking stones should not be left in an oven while... |
Did soldiers and governments express remorse for using mustard gas during WWI? | Well, some governments continued to use gas in the 1920s during a number of conflicts. When gas began to see wide use, countries quickly adapted producing protective gear and equipping their soldiers with things like gas masks. Poison gas didn't produce a high casualty rate against nations which were capable of producing protective gear quickly. Because of this a number of gas attacks in wars were used against colonial rebels. The Rif War saw the use of poison gas, Italy also used it during wars of colonial expansion in Ethiopia in the mid 1930s. The British may have also used it in the middle east during the 1920s. The Geneva Protocol banned the use of poison gas, and that was put in to place within the League of Nations in 1929. In these smaller conflicts, poison gas wasn't used to the same scale or extent. I hope that fills in some gaps.
Just to throw it out there as well, I'm not an expert, I'm a student studying modern European history.
Edit: I had to look up the name of the Convention, but the Germans broke an agreement made during the Hague Convention which prevented the use of shells and projectiles which the only purpose of was to deliver poison or irritating gas. If you look at early gas attacks in first year of the Great War the projectiles used were explosive shells with a chemical agent as part of the projectile.
_URL_0_ | [
"The Germans used Mustard Gas, a more advanced gas, for the first time at Riga (or Yperite) in September 1917. It caused both internal and external blistering in its victims. The blistering was often delayed and remained in the ground for weeks afterwards making capture of infected trenches dangerous. Protection ag... |
what are delegates? | > What determines the amount of delegates per state?
The national party makes those determinations.
> What do delegates do other than vote for the presidential nominee? Or is it a one-time thing?
They vote for the nominee as well as vote on the rules of the party and the party's platform.
> How do we vote for a delegate?
You don't, you vote for the candidate you want.
> I want to vote for candidate A, how can I choose a delegate that will do so?
You vote for the candidate. If that candidate wins, or gets enough of your state's vote, a certain number of delegates will be pledged to vote for that candidate at the convention.
> Why can't we just have a direct democracy?
Because primary elections are set up according to the rules of the political parties and the political parties want it run by the delegates. This also allows the delegates to conduct the other business of the political party at the convention, like voting on the party platform. | [
"There are various types of delegates elected to different political bodies. In the United States Congress delegates are elected to represent the interests of a United States territory and its citizens or nationals. In addition, certain US states are governed by a House of Delegates or other parliamentary assembly ... |
how do testicles work? | I'm not an expert, besides having a pair of them all my life. But I think the pain thing is likely an evolutionary device to tell us that they are one of the most important parts of our body, in terms of procreating and carrying on the species.
Just think about it, if our balls weren't sensitive to pain, we wouldn't protect them so much, which might mean that they get damaged and then we may not be able to reproduce.
As I understand it, they hang below the body because sperm is produced better at temperatures below normal body temperature. | [
"The testicles are the male gonads where sperm and male hormones are produced. Millions of sperm are produced daily in several hundred seminiferous tubules. Cells called the Leydig cells lie between the tubules; these produce hormones called androgens; these consist of testosterone and inhibin. The testicles are he... |
open vs closed system? | **Open system:** Windows can be installed on pretty much any hardware, third party developers can make modifications to it (e.g., by making a computer game that runs on Windows), and Windows can interact with other types of operating systems (e.g., MacOS).
**Closed system:** The US government develops a system to control the launch of nuclear weapons. They want it to only work on official hardware, they don't want anyone else to make any modifications to it, and they don't want it to interact with any other systems.
These are relative terms. Linux is more open than Windows, which is more open than MacOS.
As a bonus, **open source** means there is a license that says anyone can study, change, or distribute software for any purpose. It's the ultimate open system. | [
"In systems theory, an open system is a feed forward system that does not have any feedback loop to control its output. In contrast, a closed system uses on a feedback loop to control the operation of the system. In an open system, the output of the system is not fed back into the input to the system for control or... |
what is a foreclosed homes and how does buying one work? | So when someone buys a house, they get a loan from a bank. If they don't pay the loan, the bank takes the house from them. Usually the bank then hires a Realtor and sells the home at a more-than-fair price in order to make as much of their money back as possible. For the most part, it's the same as buying any other house, except that the bank probably won't make any repairs or negotiate on price. Sometimes it even just goes to auction. | [
"Traditional mortgages typically have a \"due-on-sale clause\", which stipulates that if property secured by the mortgage is sold, the entire outstanding mortgage debt must be paid in full immediately. With a blanket mortgage, a “release clause” allows the sale of portions of the secured property and corresponding ... |
how can we see the milky way if we are inside it? | We are on one of the spiral arms, about two-thirds of the way out. [This image](_URL_1_) should do a good job of giving you an idea of where we are.
When we "see the Milky Way", we're actually seeing the rest of it from our position in the galaxy. That is, we're seeing the centre. In that image I linked, imagine that you were looking upwards. You can see other spiral arms from the galaxy, but most of it is the star cluster at the centre.
Edit: [Here](_URL_0_) is a really great image of what the Milky Way "looks like" from Earth. You can see the very shape of the centre of the galaxy, as well as the edges stretching away either side. We are just part of its edge. | [
"The Milky Way is visible from Earth as a hazy band of white light, some 30° wide, arching across the night sky. In night sky observing, although all the individual naked-eye stars in the entire sky are part of the Milky Way, the term \"Milky Way\" is limited to this band of light. The light originates from the acc... |
I want to write a fantasy novel set in WW2, but I have no idea what soldier life was like. | > I have no idea how soldiers acted or things they had to deal with daily,
I was an infantryman for 8 years. In some respects, the infantry game hasn't changed all that much since WW2. At it's core, it's still humping a rifle and putting rounds downrange.
Some things about infantry life not dealt with in the popular media very well are:
* Weather. Grunts live outside. Rain, shine, heat, cold...doesn't matter - we live outside. It affects *everything*. If you're walking to class and get rained on - big deal. Grunts keep doing what they do, and will be wet and cold until the sun comes out. Homeless people in cities have more protection from the elements than an average grunt in the field. If a grunt is stationary for any length of time, tremendous ingenuity will be employed to create a space that is reasonably weatherproof.
* Fatigue. I have been awake for 60 hours at a stretch before - so tired I was hallucinating. I shot at things that may or may not have been there. You get very adept at catching catnaps in improbable places. It's not real refreshing sleep, though - just slightly reduces the weight of your eyelids.
Fighting is brutally physical work. At one point the average daily calorie intake for guys in my squad was about 5,000 calories, and most of us lost 10lbs (or more, and nobody was fat to start with) in two weeks during Operation Phantom Fury. Everybody has aches and pains after awhile, too - slightly sprained ankles, cuts and bruises, even minor illnesses that wear you down. Unless units are very disciplined, any heavy or awkward equipment is abandoned or gets "broken" because the guys get too tired to carry around useless shit.
I'm convinced some acts that seem like suicidal bravery in the history books occurred because some poor bastard was too tired to care.
"Attack at dawn? You mean I get to sleep for three hours before the attack? Aye Aye, Sir! Naw Sir - I don't care how many machine guns they have. I'll be racked out with Second Squad until go time. Hey...uh...Sir? You think we'll get to sleep after the attack? How many casualties will it take before they pull us out of the line and let us rest for a few days? That's it? Fuckit - let's attack now!"
I can't emphasize how fundamental and all-encompassing fatigue is to everything about a grunt's day-to-day life in combat.
* Limited information. In real war, the guy patrolling only knows what he sees and hears. The radio tells him what a few people far away are doing, but he only is *sure* about the guys in his unit. The enemy is probably over there (but could be anywhere) and in a pinch he can find his way back to battalion, but if you ask him how the war is going he won't have a clue. There is no zooming out to see the whole battlefield, or handy compass with red dots for enemies like in computer games. That wears on a guy after awhile, then he goes numb to it.
* Emotions. Movies try to deal with this, but most fail. Grunts can experience joy, fun, FEAR, shame, regret, hopelessness, FEAR, pride, FEAR, and shame all in a day. These feelings can be run of the mill, or so intense I can't convey depending on what's going on. I think a lot of the guys who appear to enjoy war (not many, but there are a few) enjoy the amazing feeling of LIFE one gets when the shooting stops. The air is sweet and you've never seen a sky so blue and beautiful as a grunt who's heard a round crack past his face, then put a few rounds of his own into the enemy who just tried to kill him. That specific moment is sublime. The guilt/regret/wonder/satisfaction/whatever starts about 10 minutes later, and often lasts a lifetime.
There is usually a constant low hum of anger and frustration in the background, unless the unit has excellent morale and things are going well. Even in good units, there is a lot of "resignation" to one's lot, and a general resolve to just do your best and make the most of things.
Other stuff I can think of is specific to differing organizations and time periods (food, booze, pussy, etc) so I'll stop here.. | [
"Characters from the first (\"1962 War\") world keep experiencing in dreams the lives of their analogues in the world threatened now with war. At the end of the novel, many children from the second world are transported across and given refuge in the \"1962 War\" world, where meanwhile the \"National Guard\" robber... |
Major Lies Or Misconceptions Told By Ancient Historians? | Well a good place to start here would be with Herodotus. Considered one of the earliest "Historian"s, Herodotus pioneered a lot of the techniques still used today. But he is also famous for misconstruing facts, reporting as fact statements made by people about events they never witnessed, and generally exaggerating details in order to paint a more dramatic, livelier picture.
For instance, during the battle of Thermopylae (famous recently in the movie 300), Herodotous estimated the invading Persian army to be around 2.5 million, not including support personnel. Its generally agreed that this is a wild overestimation. Most modern estimates put the figure closer to around 70k-300k.
In fact one of the running themes in ancient historical accounts is the wild exaggerations made in regards to the number of soldiers fighting in any given battle. Right up until the Napoleanic era scholars, writers and historians would vastly exaggerate or downplay the number of troops involved on each side.
Consider the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396. The number of troops on both sides was heavily disputed, with each side claiming to have "been outnumbered by 2 to 1". The numbers nowadays are estimated to have been around 15k on each side. Johann Schiltberger, who faught at Nicopolis, estimated the European strength to be around 16k, while the Turks supposedly fielded an army of 200k. This is, as I said, part of a long running tradition in ancient writings, and something anyone who studies ancient sources needs to keep in mind.
edit: Another example would be estimates of the number of Mongols fighting in Ghengis Khans army. Esitmates frequently were in the millions. But this is now understood to be a result of the Mongols ability to attack one side of a kingdom, "disappear", and attack in a completely different area. People thought they were facing an enemy numbering in the millions, but the reality is that the number of actual Mongol cavalrymen probably didn't number greater then 100k. At the seige of Baghdad for instance the Mongol cavalry presence is thought to have been around 40k. This of course doesn't include the huge number of soldiers that fought (unwillingly or otherwise) for the Mongols. | [
"An Ancient Lie is a compilation of prior releases by the progressive rock band Mach One. Released in 2002, it included songs like \"Into The Pit\" from their 1983 LP release \"Lost For Words\" (distributed via Pinnacle Records), \"No Time To Sleep\" from their 1982 cassette release \"Six of One\" plus some never b... |
Why does language change? | Basically, it's a cycle of construction and erosion - speakers create idiomatic phrases/words/grammatical structures to better express themselves, but at the same time taking shortcuts (it is > it's). Meanwhile, sound changes erode these new structures, creating new words, grammatical structures, etc. For example, the Romance languages lost Latin's future tense, and instead began using the word *habeo* (have). As time went on, this fused to the end of verbs to create a new tense.
This is why languages generally evolve in a cycle, isolating > agglutinating > synthetic > isolating. Of course, it's rarely that straightforward.
Also, many sound changes can seem odd and not necessarily "lazier." I don't really have an answer as to why these occur, but language contact has an especially large effect. | [
"Language change is variation over time in a language's phonological, morphological, semantic, syntactic, and other features. It is studied by historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Some commentators use the label corruption to suggest that language change constitutes a degradation ... |
what were the ideas behind communism and in a society with so much excess does it make more sense? | Marxism revolves around the idea of control of means of production. In a capitalist society, the bourgeoisie (uppermiddle exmerchantile class) controls the means of production by owning for example, factories, and access to raw materials. They hold the lower working class ( proletariat) economically captive, and treat them as a simple commodity of labour. The bourgeoisie need the proletariat as labour in their factories, and so pay them the smallest amount possible for their continued survival, and thus continued work. The bourgeois at the same time collects extravagant profits, with very little effort- the automobile his workers toil to make serves only him as profit, because of his monopoly on the means of production. Obviously the proletariat based on this system can never challenge the bourgeois because he will never be in the economic position to do so. This is the world Marx saw, put simply. This is what fueled the revolution, where Lenin et al. Fueled a uprising of the proleteriot against the bourgeois and the aristocrats.
Juxtaposed to this was socialism, or communism (different concepts but along the same spectrum) - everyone works as hard as they can, and then pools their resources so everyone lives amicably. Consider the maxim "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need." Everyone controls the means of production because no 'one' does, and everyone benefits from the output. That's tje conceptual basis of it.
Id recommend obviously the communist manifesto as a good starting point, but State and Revolution - Vladimir Lenin and Revolution Betrayed- Leon Trotsky are great contemporary texts. There are many economic texts on the subject but I personally focus on the politics.
Source: political studies
/history student | [
"The rise of Communism as a political movement has partially been attributed to the distribution of wealth under capitalism in which a few lived in luxury while the masses lived in extreme poverty or deprivation. However, in the \"Critique of the Gotha Program\", Marx and Engels criticized German Social Democrats f... |
First Pilgrims arrived in America in 1620 with the Mayflower but the first slave ship arrived in 1619? | The thing to note here is that the Pilgrims weren't the first English settlers. The first English settlement in North America that survived was in Jamestown (in Virginia today), 1607. Spanish settlement in the modern territory of the US also predated that, starting with St. Augustine in 1565.
So although servants (but not slaves) did accompany the *Mayflower* settlers, and they did not prohibit slavery, the 'first slave ship' ([which was really just about 20 or so enslaved Africans carried by an English warship under Dutch letters of marque](_URL_0_)) went to Jamestown. These people were not deliberate imports but spoils of war, captured from the Portuguese on the high seas en route to the Spanish colonies. At the time, the Spanish and Portuguese crowns were unified, so some cross-traffic existed between the two realms, and Spain's enemies such as the Dutch Republic became Portugal's as well. | [
"A group of Puritans known as the Pilgrims arrived on the \"Mayflower\" from England and the Netherlands to establish Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, the second successful English colony in North America following Jamestown, Virginia. About half of the one hundred-plus passengers on the \"Mayflower\" died that fi... |
Twin Paradox - Is the travelling twin younger? | Author of the link sounds totally schizo.
Of course traveling twin is younger. The twin on Earth is inertial and so he maximises proper time between departure and arrival. No matter what the other twin does, Earth twin will always be older. | [
"In physics, the twin paradox is a thought experiment in special relativity involving identical twins, one of whom makes a journey into space in a high-speed rocket and returns home to find that the twin who remained on Earth has aged more. This result appears puzzling because each twin sees the other twin as movin... |
Was the fall of the Roman Republic and consequent rise of Augustus inevitable? | Sorry I'm not at home right now and don't have access to all of my sources but I'll break it down into two sections for you; Caesar and Augustus.
I'll give a quick overview about the events close to Caesar's time but please know these problems had their roots going back (give or take) 50 years, or even to the end of the 2nd Punic War depending on how you look at it. Around the time Caesar was finishing up in Gaul things around Rome proper were in pretty terrible shape. [Armed gangs under the control of two specific specific politicians](_URL_0_ Milo terrorism & amp;f=false) were operating well out of the sphere of politics, ripping the city apart, and forcing citizens to reside in constant fear. The government was nearly powerless to stop them. The further away from Rome proper you traveled the more the provinces were growing independent from the central government and coming to be ruled by corrupt governors. Besides the gangs, the general populace of Rome was hungry and jobless; wealthy land owners were consolidating small farm holdings into their growing private estates and working the land with free slave labor. These holdings were often taken away from soldiers away on active duty and you can probably guess their reactions upon returning to see their property gone and the central government rengading on promises of rewards for their service. So into this mess stepped a guy who was loved by the people, a grand military commander, a public relations master, and an intelligent politician. Whether or not it was simply his vehicle to power, Caesar went to bat for the common man and they loved him for it. He was the right man at the right time.
I strongly recommend you read Tom Holland's Rubricon. It covers all of this in awesome detail.
Now, Augustus; of course his rise wasn't inevitable. Nothing really is but was it more likely than Mark Antony having become Emperor? I'd say yes. Caesar stipulated in his will that Augustus was to be adopted as his son, which started him off with a name of Caesar and the full weight of everything it meant behind it. Instead of getting into their war strategies and various battles I'll get a bit more meta with why Augustus and not Antony was the likely choice. This was a political battle more than a military one and Antony was -not- a politician, he was a warrior. He was far more concerned with pleasure than the burdens of ruling. Augustus however was a politician - one of the best. He was shrewd, knew how to deal with the Senate as well as the people. He also took after his Uncle/Father; a master of public relations in his own right. As time passed Anthony became increasingly distant and disconnected from Rome and it's people. Add to this the fact that Agrippa, Augustus' best friend and near co-ruler, was a military commander at least as good as Antony and you can take it from there. I'd say the battle was lost before the Battle at Actium; it was lost with the [Donations of Alexandria, pg. 90] (_URL_1_). The Senate and Roman public were shocked at how far off base Antony had grown - essentially setting up his own Eastern Monarch with Cleopatra and their children serving as the rulers. Declaring Caesar's illegitimate child as Caesar's true heir, King of Kings, and King of Egypt (and thus true ruler of Rome) was the final straw. Not only was he an illegitimate child, he wasn't even a Roman citizen (having Cleopatra as his mother). This was the final culmination of a period during which Antony grew away from Rome. Augustus seized on this and exploited it to the hilt for what it was- a display that Antony had lost his connection to Roman politics and culture. Discontent and then defection wasn't far away. | [
"In the decades after the death of Augustus, the Roman Empire was, in a sense, a union of inchoate principalities, which could have disintegrated at any time. In 68 AD, Ser. Sulpicius Galba, the governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, was proclaimed Emperor by his troops. In Rome, the emperor Nero quickly lost his supp... |
I know rogue planets (planet-sized objects that don't orbit a star) are theorized in the galaxy but are rogue stars (stars that don't orbit a galaxy) also theorized? Any theories on how prevalent they are? | Not only are they theorized, but they have been observed. Not only have they been observed, but they are incredibly numerous. It's estimated that they make up ~10% of the mass of the Virgo galaxy cluster. [More reading](_URL_0_) | [
"Besides exoplanets, there are also rogue planets, which do not orbit any star. These tend to be considered as a separate category, especially if they are gas giants, in which case they are often counted as sub-brown dwarfs, like WISE 0855−0714. The rogue planets in the Milky Way possibly number in the billions (or... |
Is the moon evenly cratered on all sides? | There are variations, usually it has to do with the entry angle relative to other massive bodies. For example, if an object is coming toward the moon but the earth is right in the way, there’s a pretty good chance that the earth with either get hit by it or warp its trajectory. Thus I would guess that the side facing the earth has less than the back side | [
"The crater interior has a relatively high albedo, making it a prominent feature when the Moon is nearly full. (The high latitude of the crater means that the Sun always remains close to the horizon even at maximum elevation less than a day after Full Moon.) The interior walls are steep and possess a system of terr... |
Why doesn't aluminium spark? | Because it's too soft. Grinding sparks occur when two conditions are met, the metal needs to be flammable, which aluminum certainly is, and it needs to be hard enough for the grinding process to heat it up to the ignition temperature. The harder the metal the more work needs to be done to grind it and the hotter it gets. The idea formula is an alloy with rare earths know as mischmetal, very hard as well as flammable, used in lighter flints and such apps. | [
"One disadvantage of aluminium is that if it strikes a rusty surface, a large thermite spark may be generated, therefore its use is restricted in tanks where there may be explosive atmospheres and there is a risk of the anode falling.\n",
"Aluminium has a stronger affinity for oxygen than most elements, which is ... |
Why does a sewing needle become magnetized when pushed/pulled through fabric for a lengthy period of time? | I'd never heard of this effect. Does it actually happen? Have you ever seen it?
Our current model for magnetism in ferrous materials is that there are microscopic regions ("domains") in a piece of ferrous metal. When you apply a magnetic field, some of them become aligned with it. As the number of aligned domains increases, the piece of ferrous material becomes more magnetised.
The proportion of domain that align depends on a number of factors including:
* Crystal structure of the material
* Temperature
* Strength of applied magnetic field
So: it could be:
* There is no such effect (always have a null hypothesis)
* While sewing, needles spend most of their time pointing the same way, so acquire ambient magnetic alignment (maybe with the Earth's field, but, damn that's small)
* Do people sewing ever use magnets as pincushions?
So: Never heard of it before, not implausible, and we could easily do some experiments. Anyone got a kid who needs a science fair project? | [
"A drawing or magnetic effect on connective tissue has been observed upon needle manipulation as the contraction and shape changes of fibroblasts cause pulling of collagen fibers and secondary alignment of fibroblasts and collagen fibers. During manipulation of the needle, collagen fibers would wind and tighten aro... |
Why was all the Popes up until the 50th Pope saints? | There are a lot of answers to this, but first note that Leo IX, Gregory VII, Celestine V, Pious V, Pious X, John XXIII, and John Paul II have all been canonized.
Here's some of the reasons, but it's not an exhaustive list.
First: the formal process of papal canonization did not exist before the twelfth century, so many of the early popes were already being venerated as saints for the simple reason that they were early popes. Their canonization was *de facto*. Additionally, the Latin *sanctus* does not mean "saint" in the modern sense until the ninth century; before that, it simply meant "holy person", and was often a title granted to living people. But once it began to mean "saint", people tended to assume it always had.
Second: the papacy immediately after the fall of Rome (i.e. around pope # 50) was in a great deal of disarray, with factions for and against the emperor in Constantinople, and several doctrinal schisms. Fewer popes were remembered well by enough people for their cults to form.
Third: the state of the papacy in the ninth and tenth century was fairly terrible. Lots of murders, with the seat being contested almost exclusively by Roman noble families. Not very good pope material.
Fourth: the Investiture Controversy again meant fewer uncontroversially holy people for the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Fifth: by the thirteenth century, most popes were trained first as canon lawyers, a state of affairs that persists up to the present. This means that many of them were excellent administrators, but not particularly saintly. | [
"Nine of the early bishops have been recognized as saints in popular culture, and three other bishops and three archbishops have been elected to the Papacy as Pope Innocent VII (1404), Pope Nicholas V (1447), Pope Julius II (1503), Pope Gregory XV (1621), Pope Benedict XIV (1740) and Pope Benedict XV (1914).\n",
... |
how do submarines resurface, or go up in general? | Replying as a serving submariner, so trying to use ELI5 terms:
The vast majority of depth changes are done using hydroplanes. Try keeping your hand flat (horizontal) and push it through water in your sink. It should move easily and you won't feel any push up or down.
Now do the same with your hand tilted upwards - you should feel a push up on the bottom of your hand.
By pushing themselves through the water using various means, and by altering the angle of their hydroplanes, the subs can dive or come shallow as they need.
Many submarines have two sets of hydroplanes, one at the forward end and one at the aft (rear) end. The forward set of planes are the ones that primarily change depth, and the aft ones are used to control the boat's 'trim' (think angle of the boat with respect to the ground). You can still control the boat's depth using the aft ones if you had a problem with the forward ones though.
Now, what we haven't covered yet is buoyancy. The sub's weight changes as depth changes - the deeper you are, the denser you are as the boat gets squeezed tighter by the additional water above us. So you get this effect where if you're heavier than you should be, you might start going deep. This makes you compress, get more dense, and start going deep quicker etc etc.
Not good.
To counteract this, the Sub control team try and keep the buoyancy of the boat as close to neutral as possible - if we go a bit shallow, we bring some water into some of the tanks in the submarine, and if we go deeper we pump some water out, keeping us neutral.
You could use this effect to surface, but the pumps are pretty slow as they have to fight against sea pressure. It would take some time.
If you have an emergency and want to just get to the surface NOW, you can push out lots of water from tanks outside the submarine using high pressure air stored in large bottle groups. This will make us very buoyant and help get us to the surface, but uses up air which we can't get back until we have surfaced. Nothing beats having propulsion and planes to get us to the surface - if we were flooding and super-heavy, pointing up and pushing hard will get us back up there.
There are various systems that work in different ways involving these three methods - planes, pumping water and using high pressure air - but without going into (sometimes classified) detail these are the basic principles behind all of them.
Edit: clarified a sentence, and thanks for the gold! Now the wife thinks I'm Internet famous! (she does not use reddit despite my continued supply of r/aww pictures) | [
"However, \"U-993\" and both capsized and sank in a floating dock outside the bunker and and were so badly damaged that they had to be decommissioned. Twenty of the Allied machinery had received specific objective instructions for damaging and/or destroying unprotected submarines in the port. One man died on \"U-99... |
what is a debt market? what opportunities and advantages are being talked about here? | "Debt market" is just a catch-all term to describe the buying and selling of debt. When people talk about the debt markets, they're usually referring to banks, who will lend money to companies. It also refers to the bond markets, where bonds are bought and sold by investors. | [
"Debt held by the public is important because it reflects the extent to which the government goes into private credit markets to borrow. Such borrowing draws on private national saving and international saving, and therefore competes with investment in the nongovernmental sector (for factories and equipment, resear... |
nasa's new microwave thruster | It's a box that a bunch of microwaves are pumped in to and according to our currant understanding of physics it should not produce any thrust, yet multiple test have reported that it does produce thrust. We have no clue what this means as of yet. | [
"The spacecraft features four solar-electric ion thrusters for propulsion called μ10, one of which is a backup. These engines use microwaves to convert xenon into plasma (ions), which is accelerated by applying a voltage from the solar panels and ejected out the back of the engine. The simultaneous operation of thr... |
why does a closed water bottle with a little water left get moldy but a full bottle does not? | *Note: I'll say mold a lot in this answer, but I'm really referring to mold, bacteria, algea, fungus and anything else unpleasant that can grow in a bottle.*
A **sealed** full bottle was sealed in a clean environment, so there was no mold in the bottle. If there's no mold in the bottle, it can't grow (mold doesn't appear magically, it grows from a small amount).
An **unsealed** full bottle may have some small amounts of mold in: however there's very little oxygen (because there's only a tiny bit of air in there) so there's not usually enough oxygen for much mould to grow. There might be a bit, but not enough to be visible. There's also not usually been much contamination, so the bottle, even if unsealed, probably doesn't have much mold in.
With a **mostly empty** bottle, we have a combination of lots of contamination from your mouth, the environment etc, and also a lot of nice oxygen to help the mold grow. This means it reproduces enough to be visible and start making nasty smells. | [
"The filled bottles are then exposed to the fullest sunlight possible. Bottles will heat faster and hotter if they are placed on a sloped Sun-facing reflective metal surface. A corrugated metal roof (as compared to thatched roof) or a slightly curved sheet of aluminum foil increases the light inside the bottle. Ove... |
Is Earth's Gravity Strong Enough To Influence Light Particles? | Yes. There's a classic experiment by Robert Pound and Glen Rebka in which they measured the shift in the frequency of light caused by gravity. Their result was published in 1960. In this experiment, light traveled through a vertical distance of 74 feet, so it didn't take a large distance to see the effect. Fun tidbit: The story I've heard is that they had to run the experiment at night, because during the day, they couldn't measure the small effect they needed to see due to the vibrations from traffic on the road near the lab (a couple hundred feet away or so).
You can read about the experiment [here](_URL_1_) or [here](_URL_0_). | [
"The gravitational weakening of light from high-gravity stars was predicted by John Michell in 1783 and Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1796, using Isaac Newton's concept of light corpuscles (see: emission theory) and who predicted that some stars would have a gravity so strong that light would not be able to escape. The e... |
how does an ip address function as a digital identity? | When you're on the internet you send a request to websites asking them to send your computer something back. I'm assuming your confusion is because multiple computers have the same/similar addresses. It's kinda like how you can have two houses on different streets with the same number. But the whole address is more than what you see in the _URL_0_ other than that it tells other computers the return address to send the data that you ask for. | [
"Digital identity is an entity's online presence, encompassing personal identifying information (PII) and ancillary information. See OECD and NIST guidelines on protecting PII. It can be interpreted as the codification of identity names and attributes of a physical instance in a way that facilitates processing.\n",... |
- what would happen to the economy if bill gates decided to save every penny he ever made, then burn it all? | Bill Gates has an annual income of 11.5 billion dollars. The American GDP is 17.95 trillion. So he makes up about 0.064% of the economy. His net worth is a bit larger, at 88.7 Billion dollars, but not everything he owns would necessarily be in an easily burnable format, and it still isn't enough to make a difference.
So the answer is "Not much." There would be some extremely minor deflation, which would quickly be drowned out by the normal rate of inflation. | [
"Franklin publicly announced that because he was unable to buy the newspaper for what he considered a \"fair price\", he was giving up the business. Franklin quipped; \"Life is too short to spend all its best days in building up a business we cannot control.\"\n",
"In 1999, his wealth briefly surpassed US$101 bil... |
during exams, what actually happens in your brain that causes your mind to go blank? | One possible explanation is the stress of exams makes your body go into fight or flight mode where stress hormones such as cortisol diverts glucose (energy) away from the hippocampus and thus decreasing your ability to recall memories. For our ancestors, this gave them the extra punch needed to survive, as it was more likely for their survival to be hinged upon beating the predator threatening them than beating the test curve. Sadly, this means when you're stressed it'd be harder to recall specific memories. | [
"BULLET::::- Cognitive/Behavioral – poor concentration, \"going blank\" or \"freezing,\" confusion, and poor organization. The inability to concentrate leads to impaired performance on tests. Fidgeting during or outright avoidance of the test. Students often report \"blanking out\" even though they have studied suf... |
what causes the "look of fear" you see on people's faces when they get really afraid? | Pupils dilate, muscles tense up. It's the fight/flight response | [
"Fear is affected by cultural and historical context. For example, in the early 20th century, many Americans feared polio, a disease that can lead to paralysis. There are consistent cross-cultural differences in how people respond to fear. Display rules affect how likely people are to show the facial expression of ... |
what is happening in my brain when... | Your brain does some interesting things with memory. When you're learning how to drive, there's a lot going on - your brain deals with all the muscle movements in controlling the car, dealing with how to react with new objects and what to do in certain situations, and it's encoding that new information as memory (assuming you're paying attention). Once you're used to driving, your brain has learned that it doesn't need to dedicate so many resources to focusing on something it already knows how to do. So it doesn't. You're driving, but your concentration is elsewhere, and your brain isn't worried about recording a memory of what was going on. | [
"It is found that when the brain of an individual is activated by a piece of information of an event in which he/she has taken part, the brain of the individual will respond differently from that of a person who has received the same information from secondary sources (non-experiential).\n",
"The moment the eyes ... |
If you could grind something solid so finely that all of the individual molecules are separated, but it's all still below freezing point, would it be a liquid or a solid? | States of matter are purely [Emergent Properties](_URL_0_), that is to say they only exist when there are many, many particles. You cannot look at a single molecule of water and say "this molecule is a molecule of ice" or "this one is a molecule of liquid."
Temperature is another such concept- a single particle does not have a temperature, collections of particles do. | [
"Liquids can interact with two main types of solid surfaces. Traditionally, solid surfaces have been divided into high-energy solids and low-energy types. The relative energy of a solid has to do with the bulk nature of the solid itself. Solids such as metals, glasses, and ceramics are known as 'hard solids' becaus... |
When was the last time a leader of a country challenged another leader of a country to a duel to settle a dispute? | Idi Amin of Uganda challenged the (elderly) Julius Nyerere of Tanzania to a boxing match to settle a military conflict between the two states.
_URL_0_
| [
"The King of Spain, tired of the long-running feud and civil strife, issues a proclamation allowing Vitelli and Alvarez to resolve their difference through a trial by combat. When the time for the combat comes, the intended duellists are interrupted by Clara, Genevora, and Eugenia, who plead for a peaceful resoluti... |
When Marx wrote that "A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism", was it? How influential was communism in 1848? | Put that quote into context:
> Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Marx is saying that "Communist" was already popular as an insult and accusation to opposition movements in Europe, that governments would accuse their critics of being stalking-horses for communism.
In the very year that Marx wrote this, for example, the Second Republic of France in its brief radical phase, encouraged by Socialist politician Louis Blanc, established the National Workshops to provide guaranteed work for the unemployed. Once Blanc's influence had faded, the National Workshops, hated as a sign of government-provided make-work, were shut down in June of 1848, and General Cavaignac, fresh off of conquering Algeria, led troops to quell (i.e. massacre) angry workers in the streets.
You can see the point Marx was trying to make in his quote in this story. Louis Blanc, a socialist, advocated and briefly passed a radical reform, and it was swiftly undone in a mere four months because it was a bit too radical for most of the French political establishment.
Marx goes on, in the text, to say that if everyone is already accusing all of their foes of being "communists," that's a sign that communism is already a relevant political force and that it's time communists proclaim what their actual program is rather than having their program be defined by their enemies using the term as an insult. | [
"Furthermore, other important shifts in Marx's thought have been highlighted (e.g. Étienne Balibar), in particular following the failure of the 1848 revolutions, in particular in France with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's December 2, 1851 coup d'état and then after the crush of the 1871 Paris Commune. This would lead h... |
why are some organizations like scientology known as being cults, but others (christianity, islam, etc.) not? | Snarky answer: They're the ones in the lead, so they make the rules.
Less snarky answer: It kinda comes down to what the person is asked to do, to be a part. Are you heavily pressured/required to give up a large chunk/all of your money, stay away from friends/family who aren't a part of the group, and in general do things which would be beneficial to the leader(s) of the group while hurting yourself in the process (physically, mentally, or emotionally)? It's a cult.
The thing is, people can use established religions as the basis for a cult. Islam is the best current example, but Christianity has been just as bad, and still is used in horrible ways (the TV preachers who tell people to tithe all their money, for instance).
I guess I can ELI5 a bit better than that....If memebers are being taken advantaged of/hurt in order to be a member (under the guidelines of the organization), it's a cult. If not, it might just be a new idea. | [
"Some governments, however, have labeled the church as a cult. Although the status is not changed or the freedom is not limited, German and Belgian government entities have accused Scientology of violating the human rights of its members and therefore called it a \"totalitarian cult\" and a \"commercial enterprise\... |
Will any sort of reading actually damage my eyes? | Low light, close, and far away reading has been shown to have no lasting affect on eyesight in any studies done. Reading on a screen at an improper viewing distance has potential to cause damage due to excessive light levels. | [
"Peripheral reading is vital to those suffering from central field loss, which is most commonly seen in the elderly. Factors which might limit one's peripheral reading rate include acuity, crowding, and eye movements. Many find difficulty making the correct eye movements for peripheral reading, but the dependence o... |
[Serious] [Urgent] What was the historical significance of the Federalist Papers, what did the papers set out to accomplish, and how do the Papers still impact is today? | Hello there. Unfortunately we have had to remove your question as it looks like it may be a homework question. A couple of things to keep in mind about this: [Our rules](_URL_1_) DO permit people to ask for help with their homework, so long as they are seeking clarification or resources, rather than the answer itself. Also: Sometimes flairs can be reluctant to answer a question that looks like homework, because they don't want to be involved in plagiarism (and sadly, yes, there are those who plagiarize reddit comments).
But, that all said, many of our users do enjoy helping out with suggestions for resources and further reading. Can you tell us what you've researched so far, what resources you've consulted, and what you've learned? If that doesn't work, you can also consider asking the helpful people at /r/HomeworkHelp. If you edit your post to be in compliance with our requirements for homework related questions, which are explored in more detail in this [META Thread](_URL_0_), we would be happy to restore it.
Additionally, we would highly suggest that you check out our six part series on '[Finding and Understanding Sources](_URL_2_)', which might prove to be useful in your research. | [
"BULLET::::- \"The Federalist Papers\", published anonymously at the time, now known to be written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. Considered the third most important document in the development of the United States government, after the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution / Bill of... |
Why is the tensile strength of a single strand of steel wire inversely proportional to diameter? | I would speculate this has to do with work-hardening effects along the surface of the wire during the drawing process. As the wire is forced through a die, you're going to get work hardening along the surface of the wire to a certain depth. As the wire gets thicker, this depth doesn't change, so the hardened portion of the diameter is smaller, and the relative tensile strength is lower.
If you annealed the wire after drawing, I would predict you'd get the same strength across all wire diameters. | [
"A wider wire results in smaller current density and, hence, less likelihood of electromigration. Also, the metal grain size has influence; the smaller grains, the more grain boundaries and the higher likelihood of electromigration effects. However, if you reduce wire width to below the average grain size of the wi... |
what's the appeal of rockstars and celebrities in general? | Because they live the lifestyle that people want.
They represent glamor and sophistication, and ultimately, wealth. | [
"A surfer, weightlifter, and bassist, Rock 'n Roll is cunning but naive, and forceful but shy. He possesses a strong sense of loyalty to his teammates and is sincerely concerned about their well being. Rock 'n Roll is a man of honor and integrity who can be counted on to hold the line.\n",
"“I’m not that interest... |
Is there any truth to the notion that the Irish helped the Germans during the Second World War? I keep hearing / reading rumours, but cannot find anything official. | Not a shred. Ireland was 'neutral', and allowed more than 50,000 volunteers to join the British army. They also prepared 'Plan W' for cooperation with the Allies if Germany ever invaded Ireland. (Further reading; 'In Time of War', Robert Fisk [1983])
In fact, recently some of the five thousand men who deserted the Irish Defense Force to join the British Army were pardoned.
_URL_0_
When they got home from WW2 they were treated as deserters, denied their pensions and generally treated quite badly (albeit following the letter of the law) For more information on that, I'd recommend 'Returning Home' by Bernard Kelly. | [
"Irish-British co-operation was a controversial proposal for both sides, as most members of the Irish political establishment had been combatants in the Irish War of Independence between 1919 and 1921. However, because of the threat of German occupation and seizure of Ireland and especially the valuable Irish ports... |
How did adolescence, as a social, rather than biological, phenomenon, develop? | hi.. not discouraging more input on this, but you may find something of interest in this recent post, which includes links to a few more
[Has "adolescence" always been a cultural concept? If not, when, how and why did it develop?](_URL_0_) | [
"Adolescence () is a transitional stage of physical and psychological development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to legal adulthood (age of majority). Adolescence is usually associated with the teenage years, but its physical, psychological or cultural expressions may begin earlier and end lat... |
where does the opinion that earth is only 5000 years old come from? | I dont think it is stated in the bible explicitly but there was a guy (James Ussher) who went through the bible and worked out how old the world was by using the lifespans of the people provided in the scriptures all the way through to the birth of Christ. The number came to 4096 years (from memory i could be wrong, so you add 2000 years onto that and you have the 6000 year earth belief. | [
"The vast majority of scientists refute young Earth creationism. Around the start of the 19th century mainstream science abandoned the concept that Earth was younger than millions of years. Measurements of archeological, biological, chemical, geological, and cosmological timescales differ from YEC's estimates of Ea... |
In the History Channel's "Vikings", someone is shown being crucified by a group of Christians. Are there accounts of Christians using crucifixion as punishment, or would this have been considered sacreligious? | This part of the show Vikings really upsets me and was the "jumping the shark" of the show for me. I believe the purpose was to make a religious/symbolic statement in the show to emphasize Athelstans "turn" from Christianity while also giving a moment of time to allow Ecbert to save him.
Constantine banned the use of crucifixion in 337CE out of respect for Jesus thus ending it's use in Europe. Also according to Church tradition, when Saint Peter was to be crucified, he asked to be crucified upside down as he didn't feel worthy to die the same way as Jesus. Thus we can assume that there was a taboo of using crucifixion in Europe. The only post-Roman crucifixions were in 14th-15th Century Japan and it is believed it was introduced by Portuguese missionaries through the imagery of Jesus' crucifixion. These crucifixions were especially used against missionaries and Japanese converts by the Shogunate to discourage the spread of Christianity in Japan.
That said, a captured raider would have had their head chopped like the dude in the first episode except the dude in the first episode should not have been executed but outlawed (meaning they have no protection from the law so family members of the slain could kill the outlawed man without retribution from the law) or forced to pay a weregild. (a monetary fine imposed for a crime) Erik the Red's (father of Leif Eriksson) father was convicted of killing more than one person and he was only outlawed from Norway which is why he and Erik left Norway to settle down in Iceland.
I want to emphasize that you should really take the show Vikings as containing fact with a small grain of salt. To us reenactors and real historians the show is kind of a joke.
| [
"According to the Gospels, two thieves are also crucified, one on each side of him. According to Luke, one of the thieves reviles Jesus, while the other declares Jesus innocent and begs that he might be remembered when Jesus comes to his kingdom (see Penitent thief).\n",
"The unnamed individual mentioned by Lacta... |
Are our decisions really "unconscious"? | That's because no-one really knows the difference between conscious and unconscious thought. Not just you!
We don't know what thoughts are, we don't know what a 'decision' means really in the context of the mind, and we don't know what consciousness is.
I'm sure the studies you talk about have been very carefully performed, but without these basic facts we can't really be that enlightened by them. All my opinion obviously. | [
"Conscious thought is considered to lead to good choices. However, because of its low capacity to process multiple factors, it actually leads to worse choices on issues that are more complex. On the other hand, unconscious thought, deliberation without attention, is often considered to lead to poor choices. However... |
how machines with bank notes work | If you mean things like self check outs where you can insert banknotes; this it boils down to this:
Inside the machine there are a plethora of detectors. These usually include (but are not limited to) cameras, LEDs, size measurement apparatus and magnetic detectors.
There is a computer inside the detector that takes in the note, runs it past the scanners and checks if the inserted note matches any of the measurement signatures present in the note. For example, British bank notes have a small magnetic strip in them with certain properties, and a coating that is very hard to replicate, but will expose certain patterns when UV light is shone on to it. The cameras can check for certain markings on the note, such as (again, in British and European banknotes at least) the EURion constellation (which is a set of spaced apart yellow dots in a 'constellation' like pattern; and co-incidentally the thing that stops photocopiers from copying banknotes). The size and thickness scanners can check for a perfect match. If the note passes all the checks it will be accepted, and if it doesn't, it will be rejected.
EDIT: More info on the EURion constellation: _URL_0_ | [
"In some modern automated teller machines, currency counters allow for cash deposits without envelopes, since they can identify which bills have been inserted instead of just how many. The user is given the chance to review the automatic counter's idea of the quantity and kinds of the inserted banknotes before the ... |
What way would a compass point on the Moon? | Since a magnetic compass isn't usable for navigation, the Apollo lunar rovers had special dead-reckoning navigation systems which used a gyrocompass for direction and an odometer to measure distance travelled. An analog computer used these inputs to provide a bearing and distance indication to the lunar module. | [
"To use the compass, the base plate is first levelled with the horizon then pointed roughly to what the user believes to be north. The equatorial drum is then tilted in relation to this base according to the local latitude. The sights are then set using the local hour angle and the declination of whatever astronomi... |
what causes those sudden urges of motivation? | You mentioned that you wanted to sleep so I'm guessing that it was nighttime when you got your urge of motivation.
I'm no professional on the matter, but I do believe that us humans tend to have a lot of thoughts going through our heads at night in our dark rooms.
Dark rooms = Less distractions = More capacity to think.
Nighttime/bedtime = No obligations to be here or there or do this or that except close your eyes and sleep. Your favorite shows on TV are no longer on, you don't have to worry about making dinner, picking up your kids if you have any, or communicating with anybody etc.
So with this freedom from obligations late at night, you feel the urge to stay up and finish that one thing you never got around to doing.
| [
"Motivation is the driving force of desire behind all deliberate actions of humans. Motivation is based on emotion—specifically, on the search for satisfaction (positive emotional experiences), and the avoidance of conflict. Positive and negative is defined by the individual brain state, which may be influenced by ... |
why do websites forget me even though i click "remember me"? | That's the saddest post I've seen today. I won't forget you buddy! | [
"What Socrates and Quintilian feared is still debated in modern-day society. Thanks to the Internet and common search engines like Google, often referred to as humankind's collective memory, remembering seems to be less important than it once was. With the right search cues and the click of a button, any person can... |
if movies and shows on your dvr aren't illegal, why are they on your computer? | Consider the source. Your cable company has a deal with the content provider. They pay X amount of money and the creator of the show/movie agrees to let them stream the content to your TV so you can watch it or save it to your box for later.
There are websites like that, too. Netflix is doing the same thing (though minus the "save for later" part).
But when you torrent a file, you're getting it from a source that has no such deal with the creator of the content. They're distributing it illegally and it's not benefiting the creator at all. That's why it's illegal. | [
"Many DVD-based DVRs have the capability to copy content from a source DVD (ripping). In the United States, this is prohibited under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if the disc is encrypted. Most such DVRs will therefore not allow recording of video streams from encrypted movie discs.\n",
"While federal and ... |
Can a black hole lose enough mass so that it's no longer collapsed under its own gravity? What does it become? | No with a caveat. Even as a black hole loses mass through some process we believe happens (such as Hawking radiation or the Penrose process) the black hole itself will always remain a compact object. Another way to think about it, is that the event horizon always shrinks to match the lost mass.
However, something like Hawking Radiation has a natural consequence of eventually allowing the black hole to become microscopic. It is unknown what happens to it once the event horizon begins to approach the Planck mass (about 22 micrograms, the mass of a flea egg). We would need a complete quantum theory of gravity to solve this. Most likely it just completely evaporates away in the same way (with time reversal t → -t) a bunch of photons can collapse into a tiny black hole. Another idea is that a finite "relic" is left behind, akin to the ground state of a hydrogen atom.
Edit: A fun little aside, if the conjecture that black holes and elementary particles share a deep relationship, we can imagine a "spectrum" of quantum objects as you change the mass with the continuous limit (high mass) limit everything reduces to black holes, see here,
* _URL_1_ (Taken from [here.](_URL_0_)) | [
"Any primordial black hole of sufficiently low mass will evaporate to near the Planck mass within the lifetime of the Universe. In this process, these small black holes radiate away matter. A rough picture of this is that pairs of virtual particles emerge from the vacuum near the event horizon, with one member of a... |
How concerned was an average person with the life of the monarch? | If you want good answers to these kinds of questions, it really helps to narrow down exactly when you're talking about! Medieval Europe was a rich tapestry of variety and regional difference even within individual countries, never mind across the continent. What's more, even in those regions massive changes over time took place.
For what it's worth, daily happenings I think is too much of a stretch, but general events do seem to have concerned non-nobility at least in the locale of the capital in late 14th century England. The Peasant's Revolt was interestingly very much targeted at specific councillors of the king such as Earl Marshal and his prison- different policies clearly were attributed to specific people around the king, and the concern voiced by the peasants was not that the King was bad, but that he had treacherous people around him. This implies a fascinating level of acquaintance with court politics and that kind of thing, at least in Kent, East Anglia, and Essex from where the Revolt was mostly sourced. | [
"The king was regarded, both during his time and in later times, as dependent on others, a weak ruler and lacking of any talents. But he was allegedly also a good husband, a caring father, and a gentle master to his servants. His favourite pastime was to make snuffboxes, which he allegedly spent a great deal of tim... |
how does dissociative identity disorder work? are all the personalities conscious the same time? | It doesn't. It's not real. The theory came sbout in the 1970s after a psychiatrist met a schizophrenic and wrote a book claiming that this was a new psychiatric condition. | [
"Dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder (MPD) is a disorder involving a disturbance of identity in which two or more separate and distinct personality states (or identities) control an individual's behavior at different times. One identity may be different from another, and when an individu... |
Japanese historians, what are your go-to works or monographs for the Modern Period (i.e. ~1867 through 1945)? | Marius B. Jansen, "The Making of Modern Japan". Although he takes a larger time frame (since the ascendance of the Tokugawa after the battle of Sekigahara in 1600), it goes through a lot of different aspects of japanese history, culture, religion and social life, ending with the events after the defeat of Japan in the Second World War. I highly recommend it.
I must say that I'm not a historian, but have a profound interest in the history of Japan and japanese culture as a whole. Maybe others can corroborate the value of Jansen's work. | [
"The Japanese Monographs are a series of operational histories, written by former officers of the Japanese army and navy, of Japanese actions in China during World War II. The 187 monographs were prepared under the direction of General Headquarters of the U.S. Far East Command beginning in 1945.\n",
"BULLET::::- ... |
what are gearbox ratios? | It's the ratio between the number of teeth on the input gear to the number of teeth on the output gear.
For a ratio of 4:1 (4), the output gear will complete 4 revolutions for each revolution of the input gear.
For ratios where the input gear has more teeth than the output, speed will increase at the cost of torque. If the input gear has less, torque will increase at the expense of speed. | [
"Different types of gears have different ratios of rotation of the motor and the wheel, and they include (3.5:1), (3:7:1), (4:1), (4.2:1), (5:1), and \"Special\" (ratio varies but are usually 6.4:1). The higher the ratio, the better the acceleration rate and torque; the lower the ratio, the better the maximum speed... |
how is paypal not a bank? | From PayPal's Wikipedia:
Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, has stated that PayPal is not a bank because it does not engage in fractional-reserve banking. Rather, PayPal's funds that have not been disbursed are kept in commercial interest-bearing checking accounts.
Check there for more info | [
"Thiel, a founder of PayPal, has stated that PayPal is not a bank because it does not engage in fractional-reserve banking. Rather, PayPal's funds that have not been disbursed are kept in commercial interest-bearing checking accounts.\n",
"In the United States, PayPal is licensed as a money transmitter, on a stat... |
What were the major overland trade routes in pre-Columbian North America like? | Not to discourage further discussion, but the [Pre-Columbian Trade and Contact](_URL_0_) section of the wiki has tons of previous posts on this topic.
Hope that helps! | [
"Travelers across what became the Western United States in the 18th century had the choice of several routes. Some of the earliest were those of the Mexicans in the southwest. American trade with Northern Mexico created the Santa Fe Trail between St. Louis and Santa Fe following an 18th-century route pioneered by t... |
How do micro-organism detect and move towards a food source? | Lots of single celled organisms navigate by means of chemical gradients (chemotaxis). They have receptors in the membrane sensitive to chemicals that correlate with food or danger, and then check to see if those levels are higher or lower as they move.
As one [example](_URL_0_), E. coli alternates between two methods of movement, one of which is random, and one of which is more or less in a straight line, and changes the likelihood of each type of movement based on those chemical gradients.
I've just been reading the book *Other Minds* by Peter Godfrey-Smith, which is a very cool overview of the evolution of nervous systems, and he mentions that a lot of single-celled organisms also have 'eyespots' which are light sensitive and allow them to follow or avoid light sources. They will also sometimes change this response depending on internal states; so algae may move towards light when low on stored energy, and away when at capacity.
Regarding your question about central processing, one really interesting point he makes is that a lot of single celled organisms are more aware of other cells around them than was previously assumed, and can have fairly complex chemical signalling between cells as well. If the early oceans were filled with this kind of signalling it's not much of a leap for a group of cells to start clumping together and using that signalling to direct their growth and exchange messages *within* an organism. Nerve cells then develop as a way to transmit those signals over a longer distance and target specific cells rather than relying only on chemical gradients and communication between neighbors.
Centralization is not the only means of directing behavior though, cephalapods seem to have much more distributed and decentralized nervous systems, which fit their very different body plans. | [
"Blackwell's research utilizes chemical probes—synthesized using microwave-assistance, solid synthesis, and combinatorial chemistry—to better understand bacterial communication and interactions between a microbe and its host, more specifically, how plants and animals react to microbe invasion, and how bacteria use ... |
This has been asked before but not answered. So, I ask again, Why did Jack Ruby kill Oswald? | As far as we know, for the obvious reasons.
You have to remember the cultural context. JFK was a liberal but he was also a staunch anti-communist. The election of JFK brought a new vitality to the US but it also met with staunch opposition and outright hatred, especially in places like Dallas. Remember that Nov 1963 was a year before the next election, JFK was trying to win over texas if it was possible. When he was shot the immediate reaction was an intense sense of tragedy and loss, nearly universally across the country, almost regardless of politics. But also there was the strong immediate suspicion that the assassination was an outgrowth of the intense local hatred for JFK and his policies that had become a significant and notable phenomenon.
Even regardless of Oswald's motives in killing the president there was an intense shame that settled on Dallas for what had happened there given the local sentiment at the time.
Ruby had extensive connections with the local police and was somewhat of a gangster so for him killing Oswald probably felt like less of a big deal than it might for others, and he was certainly one of the few civilians with such an opportunity. But at the time there was an incalculably long list of individuals with a strong desire to visit revenge on the president's assassin. He merely was in a position to carry out such a thing.
JFK's approval rating peaked at about 70%, which you might consider to be the percentage of the population who would be significantly grief-struck when he was killed. | [
"Ruby was arrested immediately after shooting Oswald, and he told several witnesses that he had been distraught over President Kennedy's death and had helped the city of Dallas \"redeem\" itself in the eyes of the public, and that his motive for killing Oswald was \"saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming ba... |
how do news/radio stations get their four letter name ex: "wrcb" | Every television and radio station in the world has a station ID. In the US, these start with K or W, generally with W being east of the Mississippi River and K to the west.
The station IDs are assigned by the Federal Communications Commission. A station can request a certain callsign, which it will get if it's not previously assigned elsewhere.
Network news doesn't have one because it's the individual stations that actually do the broadcasting that need the callsign, and not the network that's carried over satellite. | [
"Certain ABC radio stations, particularly outside of metropolitan areas, may use five-letter call signs for FM stations: \"xABCFM\" for ABC Classic FM, \"xABCRN\" for Radio National, and \"xABCRR\" for ABC Local Radio – the \"x\" being the state number. Also, SBS FM radio stations use a five-letter call sign, \"xSB... |
why are we so determined to find extraterrestrial life? | One reason, that is a popular belief, is that we are looking for another place to live on. The reason is because we think one day we'll use up all the things we need to live. So we look for life because all living beings need the same things to live, meaning the planets with life are planets we can move to and live on. But we aren't specifically looking for intelligent aliens, micro organisms and bacteria will do too. | [
"Despite widespread belief, there is no empirical knowledge concerning extraterrestrial life forms and civilizations. The implications of a detection of extraterrestrial life would vary greatly depending on the nature of that life, its location, and how human society reacts. Because of this lack of certainty, PDPs ... |
Catullus and Caesar were contemporaries. Did the former reserve any contempt for the latter? | The relationship between Catullus and Caesar is a rocky, kind of resentful one, to put it kindly. There are two poems by Catullus (out of about 116) that directly attack Caesar—not necessarily as a politician, but in a very vitriolic *ad hominem* way, taking blows at his pride through his manhood. The first is a two-line dismissal of Caesar as not even worth Catullus’ time, and the second is an extended indictment of Caesar’s, er, sexual proclivities. The latter is a more direct attack, using baser language and alluding to Mamurra, one of Caesar’s political cronies, as more of a (*cough*) butt buddy.
The first one I mentioned is Catullus 93, which I’ve loosely translated below.
> XCIII. ad Gaium Iulium Caesarem
> Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere,
> nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo.
> > I take no great pains to please you, Caesar, nor to know whether you are a white or a black man.
The white/black contrast has moral connotations as well, and the Latin word *ater*, aside from meaning “gloomy, dark, or lusterless” also has poetic usages meaning “malevolent,” etc. which contrast with *albus*; aside from meaning “white”, *albus* also means “favorable” or “propitious,” even before the shift in language (which happens gradually, but comes to fruition around 500 years later) that results in heavy moral connotations associated with many words which previously were in the common lexicon.
> LVII. ad Gaium Iulium Caesarem
> Pulchre convenit improbis cinaedis,
> Mamurrae pathicoque Caesarique.
> nec mirum: maculae pares utrisque,
> urbana altera et illa Formiana,
> impressae resident nec eluentur:
> morbosi pariter, gemelli utrique,
> uno in lecticulo erudituli ambo,
> non hic quam ille magis vorax adulter,
> rivales socii puellularum.
> pulchre convenit improbis cinaedis.
This is the most obvious and well-fleshed-out attack on Caesar, and it roughly translates as follows:
> Well-matched are the wanton sodomites, Mamurra and Caesar, f*ggots both. No wonder: Equal stains to each the other, one from city girls and the other from Formian, are impressed on them and cannot be washed out. Equally diseased, twins to each the other, both “experts” in one bed, neither a more voracious adulterer than the other—rivals of their “colleagues” and of little girls. Indeed, well-matched are these wanton sodomites.
I’ll leave it with a couple of bits from Spaeth’s article on Caesar’s political friends and enemies among Roman poets, which is cited in a lot of scholarship on Catullus.
Catullus used his poetic talents for passionate discourse on politics; there were active political participants among the Roman political scene at the time, as well, including some of the *poetae novi*, among whose numbers was Catullus himself. Along with common poetic ideals, the *poetae novi* exhibited similar political ideals, and “their changes of front in the face of political developments were not greatly different from those of Cicero himself, with whom…most of this group were on terms of close intimacy” (Spaeth, “Caesar’s Friends and Enemies Among the Poets, 541-2).
Caesar also allowed Clodius to “have his way with Cicero” in 58, and Clodius and Clodia (Lesbia, the lover who spurns Catullus) were by no means on Catullus’ good side by that point. He didn’t want to actively participate in the political scene, but he couldn’t just set aside his pride and entirely remove himself from politics, either. And so he joined “other young intellectuals of independent spirit in bitterly lampooning Caesar, Pompey, and their political henchmen” (Spaeth 545).
Tl;dr: Caesar realized that having a poet as a political enemy was not so good, Catullus had bitter basement emo hatred of Caesar
| [
"Cato's political and personal differences with Caesar appear to date from this time. In a meeting of the senate dedicated to the Catilina affair, Cato harshly reproached Caesar for reading personal messages while the senate was in session to discuss a matter of treason. Cato accused Caesar of involvement in the co... |
can someone explain concentrated stress? | Check this out: _URL_0_
The closer the hook is to the hinge, the more force you can apply, right? If the hook was, conceptually, infinitely close to the hinge you could apply infinite force, right?
A bigger radius is just like moving the hook away from the hinge. The sharper the corner, the closer to the 'infinite force' situation you get. Technically, if you could make a 'perfect' sharp corner in a perfectly brittle material it would basically break under any load at all.
In brittle materials, fillets are *super duper important*. In materials that suffer from fatigue, fillets are *super duper important*. In designs that are stressed anywhere near max, fillets are *super duper important*.
In extremely over-built mild steel constructions, they're not that important. :-P
EDIT: for a little more in depth look at it, you have the highest stress at the corner, where the strain is the highest. If you have a perfect sharp corner, the first molecular pair at the corner take up the entire quantity of stress in the area, because they're the first pair to see strain. A big corner rad distributes that strain between many pairs of molecules, which distributes the stress as well. | [
"A stress concentration (often called stress raisers or stress risers) is a location in an object where stress is concentrated. An object is stronger when force is evenly distributed over its area, so a reduction in area, e.g., caused by a crack, results in a localized increase in stress. A material can fail, via a... |
why do people never make fake papers instead of fake ids? | Some people do. If the bar does chose to accept it, and there's a very slim chance they will, it it must have a photo ID and could realistically only be used once or twice because you would receive an actual ID within a week or so. | [
"A distinction needs to be made between the different uses of an identity document. In some cases, the fake ID may only have to pass a cursory inspection, such as flashing a plastic ID card for a security guard. At the other extreme, a document may have to resist scrutiny by a trained document examiner, who may be ... |
If a second is defined by the set number of periods of a Cs-133 atom's transitions between hyperfine levels of ground state at 0°K, and absolute zero is the point when all atomic motion stops, how can Cs-133 still transition between hyperfine levels at absolute zero? | The second is defined as the period of the *radiation* emitted, not the period of the transition itself.
> the duration of 9192631770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom
There is an energy difference between the two hyperfine levels. And there is a photon emitted if that transition occurs, with energy equal to that energy difference. The second is defined relative to the frequency of that photon.
I think the motion aspect is throwing you off, when it really doesn't factor in. We set the definition at the limit approaching absolute zero because that implies no external fields (which could slightly change the energy difference). The second isn't defined relative to motion of the cesium atom, just the photon frequency of the energy difference between those two states. | [
"The lower critical dimension formula_42 of a phase transition of a given universality class is the last dimension for which this phase transition doesn't occur if the dimension is increased starting with formula_43.\n",
"An electron in level 2 may decay by spontaneous emission to the ground state, releasing a ph... |
What is realistically stopping a rocket from continuous acceleration to the speed of light in space? | If you find the equation of motion for a massive object under a constant force, you'll find that it asymptotically approaches the speed of light: the velocity is the hyperbolic tangent of what you'd expect the velocity to be ignoring relativity. Relativity is necessary to ensure that physics behaves the same no matter how you look at it.
This means that it would literally take an infinite amount of time to reach that speed. However, there's a more pressing problem, that you'd run out of fuel long before that. | [
"In practice, this is accomplished by matching the rotation of the surface below, by reaching a particular altitude where the orbital speed almost matches the rotation below, in an equatorial orbit. As the speed decreases slowly, then an additional boost would be needed to increase the speed back to a matching spee... |
- keynsian economics, classic economics, pros, cons, and which is better, etc. | There was a recent thread on just Keynesian economics that would be helpful:
_URL_1_
For a ELI5-style overview of other economic concepts, check out the *60-second adventures in economics* video playlist (The first video is the other 6 combined into a single 7-minute video):
_URL_0_
What's the best economic theory? Let's put it this way: President Harry S Truman was once talking to one of his economic advisers about what could be expected in the coming year. After the economic adviser gave a forecast, Truman asked, "So, we can expect interest rates to be about 6% next year?"
The economic adviser replied, "It could happen, other the other hand..."
Truman interrupted him and shouted, "What this country needs is a good one-handed economist!"
In other words, economics today is about where medicine was in the middle ages: The practitioners can see *what* works, but they're still struggling to understand *why* it works. | [
"Cliometrics (, ), sometimes called new economic history, or econometric history, is the systematic application of economic theory, econometric techniques, and other formal or mathematical methods to the study of history (especially social and economic history). It is a quantitative (as opposed to qualitative or et... |
how does amazon local make money? | It's the same business model as sites like Groupon in that the business pays Amazon to show their deal. This is advantageous as it is simply another advertising front for the business. Beyond that, they are relying on you coming back after using your deal and also spreading the word to your friends etc. | [
"Amazon Local is a daily deal service launched in June 2011 in Boise, Idaho. , Amazon Local offers daily deals to over 100 regions in 36 U.S. states. Amazon Local also acts as a deal aggregator; some of the deals are actually offered through LivingSocial, a firm in which Amazon has heavily invested.\n",
"In June ... |
Why are Osmium and Iridium the densest elements, instead of a heavier element like Gold or Bismuth? | I answered something similar [yesterday](_URL_0_).
It has to do with atomic mass, atomic radius, and crystal structure. Crystal structure determines amount of 'empty space' per lattice piece, atomic radius determines the size of the lattice piece, and atomic mass then determines the weight. All together, you get the density. | [
"Osmium has a blue-gray tint and is the densest stable element; it is approximately twice as dense as lead and slightly denser than iridium. Calculations of density from the X-ray diffraction data may produce the most reliable data for these elements, giving a value of for osmium, slightly denser than the of iridiu... |
Question to Indian, British Empire and colonial historians regarding Indians under British employment. | I think your question has a few flaws in it.
Firstly, I think you have a misconception with regards to who exactly wore turbans in India. In the same way that Londoners used to all wear bowler hats and carry umbrella's as a sign of respectability, most Indian's used to wear turbans. The Sikhs are famous for their habit of wearing turbans, but most Indian communities did wear different types of turbans, from the *dastar's* and *dumalla's* worn in the North, to the *thalappa* and the *peta* in South India.
Secondly, just wearing a turban does not automatically denote a person as being Sikh. For example, [this file picture is of the Baluch regiment](_URL_3_), who at the time were almost all Bombay Muslims.
The British did have the concept of ['martial races'](_URL_0_), which might have skewed their recruitment, but to say that ALL pictures of Indian soldiers from that time were in turbans is completely wrong. [Gurkha's](_URL_1_), who are by reputation far fiercer fighters, did not wear turbans, and neither do [Maratha's](_URL_2_), another favored British 'martial race'.
In popular Western media it seems the shorthand method to denote Indian soldiers is to give a guy a bushy beard and a turban, and name him "General Singh', but there was far more diversity in the British Indian army than that.
Dear mods: I am aware that I have provided very little reference beyond Youtube and Wikipedia, but my comment is just a clarification, not a direct answer, as I feel that the question itself is poorly formed. | [
"Meanwhile, the second-generation Indian immigrants, who were exposed to the cultures of foreign land and were more attuned to British policies, were able to work beyond the agricultural sector. These Western-educated skilled professionals were employed by the British in the Colonial Service. In the British territo... |
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