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Why do some autoimmune disorders hit later in life? | [ALS](_URL_6_) isn't thought to be autoimmune, it is thought to be due to faulty cellular salvage mechanisms.
The short answer to your question is that we aren't exactly sure, since we don't understand the mechanism of many auto-immune diseases.
Some diseases do affect children. [Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis](_URL_2_) affects kids.
All autoimmune disorders appear to have a genetic susceptibility involved. Things like [HLA-B27](_URL_5_), [HLA-DR14](_URL_0_), etc. are very strongly associated with certain diseases. The current understanding is that in predisposed individuals, certain inciting events can lead to full-blown autoimmune disease.
Many autoimmune disorders appear to be in response to some sort of infection or other damage. Examples include [reactive arthritis](_URL_3_) (don't call it Reiter's... he was a Nazi war criminal), [rheumatic fever](_URL_8_), [polyarteritis nodosa](_URL_7_), and [cryoglobulinemia](_URL_1_). So maybe the inciting infection occurs later in life.
The inciting event for some other diseases may be related to age. A possible mechanism for this would be the death of populations of long-lived cells, which display an antigen, which incites autoimmune disease.
Hormones play a role in many autoimmune diseases. The body doesn't produce much estrogen or testosterone until puberty, so this could play a role as well.
Rheumatologic diseases are fascinating. One of my favorites is [sympathetic ophthalmia](_URL_4_), where trauma to one eye exposes antigens, causing autoimmune disease in the healthy eye! | [
"Autoimmune disorders are when the body has an immune response to itself, causing an inflammatory reaction to occur within the body. Because autoimmune disorders involve abnormalities in the immune system cells (i.e., B-cells, T-cells). It can be inferred that miRNA are strongly expressed in regions of the body tha... |
how is it that some music/songs can "bring you back" to the first time that you heard them? | Your brain works by association. Things that happened together will be "stored together" in the brain, and bringing one up, will bring up the other. This is why Pavlov's experiments work. The dogs remember that when the bell ringed they got food, and so when the bell rings, the start salivating because they expect food (bell and food go together). | [
"Hearing an old song can bring back memories for a person. A song heard once at a specific moment and then not heard again until a far later date will give the listener a sense of nostalgia for the date remembered and events which occurred then.\n",
"\"As a rebirth one has to go back to point zero to move forward... |
Could you hypothetically send a message to the past? (quantum mechanically speaking) | That's a good question. In principle, you can: relativity allows the existence of closed time-like curves. And a post-selected quantum teleportation experiment does indeed allow information flow into the past: _URL_0_ | [
"In the 1990s, scientists realised one can securely transmit a message through encrypting and using a shared key generated by Einstein's strange entanglement to decode the message from the sender and receiver. Using the quantum key meant the message was completely secure from interception during transmission.\n",
... |
Can a polygraph distinguish between lies and normal nerves? | > Can a person reading a polygraph test tell the difference between a lie and nervousness due to the pressure of the situation?
Possibly. Have a quick skim of the Wikipedia article on [lie detection](_URL_0_). It'll be an important frame for this discussion because a big issue with all lie detection methods, polygraph and otherwise, is that they are not reliable. They will fail. Sometimes when someone is telling the truth (and the poly says they're lying), and other times when they're lying (and the poly says they're telling the truth).
The [polygraph](_URL_1_) is an old, and relatively cheap system. It measures a number of peripheral physiological markers, usually pulse, blood pressure, respiration and skin conductance. These measures are used because they are not fully under direct cognitive control (though you can do things to alter these, for example holding your breath will change skin conductance).
Can someone use these measures to tell if you're telling a lie versus if you're just nervous? They can, if they are able to reliable determine if you are lying. The difference between lying and being nervous is that being nervous is a state. It will be reflected in the peripheral indices throughout the testing session.
The way that a poly is typically done is to ask a series of simple questions. What happens to the peripheral markers in *response* to these questions (event-related responses) is what the examiner will be evaluating. If you are nervous, this will be visible prior to the question being asked, but whether or not you're telling the truth/lying should still be visible in those peripheral markers above and beyond your baseline state. That is, if the test is doing it's job.
At the end of the day, the poly is not a great tool. It's prone to failure, it requires the person to be compliant, and it can be fooled, and quite easily. Also, galvanic skin response (measured via skin conductance), one of the canonical measures, can be completely absent in some people. | [
"A polygraph, popularly referred to as a lie detector test, is a device or procedure that measures and records several physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while a person is asked and answers a series of questions. The belief underpinning the use of the polygrap... |
Is adolescence an invention of the 20th century? | Later medieval England certainly recognized adolescence as a distinctive life stage in practice. Of course there were exceptions of kids having to "grow up too fast," but unfortunately those exist today, as well. To bust open one myth first: no, medieval kids weren't always married by age 12, although it occasionally happened. I talk more in-depth on this question [here](_URL_0_), but in short: girls tended to marry earlier than boys, upper class girls in particularly tended to marry earlier than lower and middle class ones, and marriage age crept upward over the course of the later Middle Ages. Urban Renaissance Italy is the most famous case of girls *systematically* marrying quite young. At the same time, it's important to recognize that medieval teenagehood was more akin to a blend of adulthood and childhood, and direct preparation for adult life, than we perhaps think of it in the modern West.
Among rural and urban peasants in late medieval England, there is ample evidence for teenagehood as a distinct life phase for girls and boys. Teenagers spent a lot of their time working alongside adults, but also some of their time working and playing with other children. For example, younger teenage boys did not compete in organized adult games like archery and wrestling. They spent time in the fields and workshops with their fathers, but unlike adult men, they continued to participate in fishing and gathering with younger children and teenage girls.
Especially towards the end of the Middle Ages into the early modern era, peasant girls in particular (to some extent boys as well) often spent their teenage years as domestic servants. On one hand, this was good training for their futures running their household; on the other, it helped girls build up a good dowry for their financial future after marriage.
For boys in particular intending to pursue a trade, the guild structure also created distinct social statuses that separated the men from the boys quite literally (and in a few cases girls, although women guild members were *most* often widows of deceased male members carrying on in their stead). One of the best demonstrations of the social aspects of this is actually university students (universitas originally referring not to the school but to the guild of its members). Urban chronicles often rail against the ruckus caused by student hooligans! (Sometimes they were exempt from civic regulations, even, thanks to the power of their *universitas*.)
The emotional aspects of adolescence weren't ignored, either. Some villages actually institutionalized flirting. Croscombe had a Maidens' Gild and their male counterpart Younglyngs as social-religious groups. On alternate celebration days, each gild would blockade part of the village and exact a toll from members of the other as a fundraiser.
For the nobility, I mostly know the female side of the story. Here, a *lot* of the emphasis was on parents and daughter cooperating (well, ideally) to secure her the best marriage possible. A lot of this involved helping the teenage daughter develop good social contacts through parties, court events, letter writing...and, like their peasant counterparts, frequently spending her teenage years away from her parents' home.
In some cases, this ended up as varying degrees of domestic servitude; in others, girls ended up basically as surrogate daughters, or could even be formal ladies-in-waiting at a noble court. You might think of Anne Boleyn, who was offered a place in Margaret of Austria's court (in the Netherlands) in 1513 and then subsequently at the French royal court. Noble girls needed a different set of household management skills from their peasant counterparts, and they'd also spend these years learning and using courtly arts (dancing, fine sewing, manners).
As for the "end of adolescence," I think a fair case can be made for marriage as the chief marker. Looking at cases of moneyed orphans who were wards of the state, courts would grant them their inheritance, held in trust, *upon marriage*. In Renaissance-era Italy, the very few women whose fathers arranged a humanist education for them tended to be literary fountains during adolescence--and then shift their creative efforts upon marriage to writing letters to their adult children. (This is not a universal story, but it's sadly common.) One of the reasons the marriage age for men in late medieval Italy was so late, was their desire *not* to inherit money too early and risk breaking up the family patrimony.
One interesting note on that point. I mentioned earlier that the most entrenched case of early marriage for girls was urban Italy. Christine Klapisch-Zuber argues that a *big* effect of this practice was the new wife's lack of social power within her new family, since upper class women literally married *into* their husband's paterfamilias--frequently moving into her *father-in-law's* house. Thus, even a newly married teenage girl would have had a period of time learning the skills of urban household management before her husband came into his patrimony and his own household for her to run. | [
"Up until the latter portion of the 20th century in OECD countries, and contemporarily in developing countries around the world, young people made the transition from adolescence to young adulthood around or by the age of 22, when they settled into long-lasting, obligation-filled familial and occupational roles. Th... |
how do conservationists repopulate almost extinct species | They won't. Even when he was alive, there really wasn't hope with such a small population.
While you can try and repopulate with a pretty small pool, not that small.
One example of successful conservation efforts was the American Bison. Before colonization, its estimated that there were possibly 60 million bison. By 1889, there were about 1,100. Now there are 500,000, though most are farm raised, not wild.
However, even with a sample of around 1,100, the Bison population still has a problem with a limited gene pool
Grizzlies in the Yellowstone region went from 136 in 1975 to about 700 today.
In NJ, bald eagles have grown by a factor of 7 in 15 years.
Any animal that has gone through a quasi-extinction event, or a population bottleneck will have the problem of inbreeding. | [
"Conservation programs all over the world fight to protect species from going extinct, but the unfortunate reality is, most conservation programs are underfunded and underrepresented. Conservation programs can struggle to fight bigger issues like habitat loss and illness. To rebuild degrading habitats takes major f... |
Why is the California EPA decide to reclassify glyphosate as a carcinogen? | It looks like California EPA is proposing [this](_URL_0_) in regards to a recent working group [finding](_URL_1_). This policy is still open to comments until October 5th so this isn't guaranteed to be put into effect yet.
The reasoning for this policy proposal is that more studies have been completed on glyphosate's carcinogenic potential. The working group cites a few different studies (I haven't read them, I'm just reiterating what their proposal states as their reasoning) that show strong correlation (with proper controls and groupings) between some types of cancer and round-up use in humans. Direct interaction in mice with glyphosate and aminomethylphosphoric acid (what glyphosate breaks down to into by bacteria and has been detected in human blood) can increase cancer rates. Glyphosate apparently also can damage chromosomes in cells (these studies were done *in vitro* aka in a petri dish and not in an entire organism).
Glyphosate's health effects have been studied quite a bit, I doubt the majority of studies on the subject were flawed. It looks like new ones are coming out that indicate a strong relation between glyphosate and certain types of cancer. Keep in mind cancer isn't something that develops overnight, it and the studies on it can take time. Nor is the peer review process for publishing studies on this subject exactly fast. More studies on the effects are being done and according to International Agency for Research on Cancer Monograph Working Group the evidence is mounting that glyphosate is a potential carcinogen.
A caveat to this is that the working group's report does not mention any studies where no difference was detected (null results). It is unlikely all the recent studies on glyphosate have found a link between it and cancer. These studies are just as important as the ones that find positive/negative results.
It'll be interesting to see what happens with this. If it is put into effect I assume Monsanto will sue. California is a *huge* agricultural state and uses a lot of the stuff. ~~I'm guessing there will be a lot of unhappy farmers too that would have to drastically change their management practices, which is not easy.~~ (See edit)
Edit: So reading up on what exactly CA EPA's [known to the state to cause cancer for purposes of Proposition 65](_URL_2_). It looks like if glyphosate were to be added to the list of proposition 65 chemicals, it would put more restrictions on what users can do with glyphosate, not out right ban it. I'm unsure if this would even effect farmers as
> Businesses with less than 10 employees and government agencies are exempt from Proposition 65’s warning requirements and prohibition on discharges into drinking water sources. Businesses are also exempt from the warning requirement and discharge prohibition if the exposures they cause are so low as to create no significant risk of cancer or birth defects or other reproductive harm. Health risks are explained in more detail below.
So farmers may not fall under this, I'm not sure about farm hand labor and whether they count as full employees in CA.
Edit 2: hyperlink format | [
"After the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) announced, in March 2015, plans to have glyphosate listed as a known carcinogen based on the IARC assessment, Monsanto started a case against OEHHA and its acting director, Lauren Zeise, in 2016, but lost the suit in March 2017.\n",
"I... |
Question regarding the speed of electrical signals through wire | The speed of signal propagation through an electrical cable is about 2/3 the speed of light. So it would have to be reeeeaaaallly long to cause a delay. | [
"The wire speed may also refer to maximum throughput, which typically is a couple of percent lower than the physical layer net bitrate in wired networks due to datalink layer protocol overhead, data packet gaps, etc., and much lower in wireless networks.\n",
"The wire speed should not be confused with the line bi... |
if aliens were to pick up one of our radio signals, would they be able to read its message? | No. Or maybe yes.
There is a thing called signal-to-noise ratio. Think of it like this: we two meet in a pleasant, quiet room and exchange noises. I hear what you say, you hear what I say, perfectly clear.
Now imagine us meeting in a stadium during the superbowel. I sit on one side of the field, you sit on the other side. We try having the same conversation we did before, at the same level of intensity.
Well, that is just not working, because the sound of 74.903 other people screaming at the top of their lungs tends to drown out our conversation effort.
With radio signals, the situation is pretty much the same. We may send them into outer space, and after a certain distance the signal looses to the noise. Granted, there are many techniques that we know of to boost the signal and reduce the noise, both at the sending and the receiving end. But somewhere along the line, the signal-to-noise ratio has the noise winning.
Apart from that, if aliens *could* receive our messages, could they *understand* them?
Again, yes and no. Just like us, they will have scientists dedicated to the cause. We send a short signal, pause, send two short signals, pause, send three short signals ... Chances are that when they receive our signals they will eventually rule out natural phenomena as a source for what they receive.
At present, basic mathematics are considered a source of knowledge that another civilization might pick up on as being intentional instead of random. | [
"We did not really believe that we had picked up signals from another civilization, but obviously the idea had crossed our minds and we had no proof that it was an entirely natural radio emission. It is an interesting problem – if one thinks one may have detected life elsewhere in the universe[,] how does one annou... |
the current coup d'état in egypt | Some time ago, Egypt held a revolution of sorts to kick out an effective dictatorship. The army helped the people do this, and set up a temporary government and helped set up elections. The people had to get angry at the army to convince the army to do this.
Elections were held with a lot of candidates, and finally someone won, someone who only had the support of about 1/4 of the country, but who still had the highest number of votes. This person was backed by various hardline Islamic groups.
As time went on it became apparent that the person that was the first democratically elected leader of Egypt was not living up to the people's expectations. However the new democracy had no legal mechanism for the people to remove from power a government that they no longer had confidence in.
So the people arranged a large demonstration. The western media first portrayed this as being roughly evenly split between people who liked the current leaders and people who did not, but it quickly became apparent that the vast majority of people did not support the government, and large protests were held.
The Egyptian army had a different leader than last time, and they told the government that the people had spoken and insisted that the leaders leave office. The leaders refused, so the army removed them and set up a caretaker government so the country can try again to vote a new government.
The western media called this a 'coup' but the people who live in Egypt and Cairo specifically do not see it as a coup, they see it as being liberated and impeaching the existnig government that they no longer democratically supported. There are many people who think this should be the army's job, helping the people remove governments they have no other way to remove.
Hopefully this time they will set up a better government and voting system. | [
"The 2013 Egyptian coup d'état took place on 3 July 2013. Egyptian army chief General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi led a coalition to remove the President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, from power and suspended the Egyptian constitution of 2012. The move came after the military's ultimatum for the government to \"resolve its dif... |
how exactly did the word "dank" come into it's current meaning? | Similar to your grandparent's cellar, stoners describe smelly, potent marijuana as "dank." They and many others then started to use "dank" as an ironic or self-aware description of so called "memes." | [
"The origin of the term is obscure and many theories have been proposed. The \"Oxford English Dictionary\" notes the first attestation as Berrey and Van den Bark's 1942 \"American Thesaurus of Slang\". There, \"dike\" was the more common term. From the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, \"dike\" had been A... |
What are the strengths of micro-history? | Ah yes, a question on micro-history!
The strengths of micro-history according to many of its proponents is that micro-history in essence allows us to really observe up close and see how dynamics, trends, policies etc. directly affect humans, what kind of constraint concrete actors are placed under, and allows to discover the interdependence with wider scales when it comes to local dynamics – which at the same time reveal something that a top down approach often can't illustrate as good.
History in essence is always the study of change and when observing a micro environment we can observe said change playing out up close, especially when it comes to social norms being put under stress in time of crisis and flexible adaption of action, decisions, and choices becomes necessary for the historical actors. Local constraints and rationalities play a huge role e.g. in times of war and upheaval and by observing them up close we are often able to discover dynamics and realities that expand our knowledge and understanding of a process and might not align with a top-down greater narrative that is often imposed on historical developments.
An example of this comes from Hannes Grandits in his article *Violent social disintegration: a nation-building strategy in late Ottoman Herzegovina.* in: Conflicting Loyalties in the Balkans. The Great Powers, the Ottoman Empire and Nation-Building, ed. by N. Clayer, H. Grandits and R. Pichler, London 2010, S. 110–134.
In it Grandits takes a closer look at how the Herzegovinan revolt that eventually lead into Serbo-Turkish and later into the Russo-Turkish wars of 1876–78 actually functioned on the ground. This uprising is often portrayed as both prove for ethnic conflict in the Balkans as well as for the rise of the nation against Ottoman rule in the area. The fact is though that it started out as neither. Rather, it started as something fairly common, a refusal by local political village leaders to pay taxes because the harvest had been bad in previous years.
Initially both sides were open to negotiations and a commission of a Pasha was send to the area to negotiate with the peasants. Within these negotiations however, a group of local nomadic bandits robbed an Ottoman caravan because they feared – rightly – that good relations between authorities and peasants would threaten the support they received from locals. This caravan attack lead to Ottoman reprisals and while things seemed to be winding again down after this, these reprisals caught the attention of young nationalists from Serbia and Montenegro that traveled to the area to enlist the help of aforementioned bandits to fan the flames of conflict. Suffice to say that despite the opposition of local village leaders, they were successful because the spiral of violence this relatively small group of people managed to lead to a homogenization of interests in the sense that local peasants were caught in between fronts and had to declare for one side for fear of retribution or generally violence.
Furthermore, because he saw the chance to gain territory, the Knajz (local ruler) of Montenegro "internationlized" the conflict by pleading for help from Garibaldi who sent him Italian volunteers to fight with the rebels against the Ottomans. It was really only this move which lead to an internal and external perception of the conflict as one that was "ethnic" or religious while most of the Herzegovians who actually fought on the ground had started this not to end Ottoman rule or "expel the Turk" but rather as rebellion simply to get central authorities to ease off with the taxes.
Through a process of violence and agitation, a relatively small group of what Roger Brubaker describes as [nationalist entrepreneurs](_URL_0_) managed to homogenize the interests of the local population with their own politically goal. And this how the historic region that the Ottomans referred to as Herzegovina ended up being divided between the "ethnic" groups of Montenegrinians (who at the time largely understood themselves as Serbs), Serbs, and Croats.
In fact, the function of what Brubaker terms the "group making" process is best observation when playing out on a limited and local scale. Another recent example comes from Rory Yeomans in his investigation into the Croatian town of Karlovac under Ustasha rule in WWII.
What Yeomans observes in his article is that the key to what he calls soliciting compliance, meaning the ways and means to ensure the population's compliance with the regime change in Croatia from the former Yugoslavian kingdom to the new fascist state lay in the implementation of local measures. People didn't embrace Fascism in Karlovac necessarily because of their preexisting affinity for it but in many a ways because the local representatives of the new regime could assert believably that the new regime would improve conditions.
And within these believable assertions, the regime to implicitly solicit compliance with the new regime. He mentions the local authorities in Karlovac holding a charitable event called the "Week of the Mother and Child" and writes:
> Such charitable events allowed the city, and the state more generally, to transform mundane tasks, almost entirely unrelated to the regime's exlusivist racial ideology and defining campaign of terrot, into demonstrations of patriotism and loyalty to the new nation-state. Being helpful and charitable was thus held up as a Croatian and Ustasha characteristic as much as joining the militia, evidence of one's commitment to the Ustasha cause. (...)
>
> As elsewhere in the state, the local Ustasha organization made being a racially aware Croatian and demonstrating loylaty to Ustasha precepts important aspects of daily life in Karlovac; it required citizens to adopt the new racial-national categories the state had developed whenever they needed approval for something from the local authorities. (...)
>
> When Glasonoša announced that the city leadership was taking applications from prospective renters seeking to move into the newly constructed Stipe Javor workers' neighborhood, the newspaper noted that applicants needed to include several certifications. Among these, the city asked that applicants prove they were "physically and mentally healthy", "frugal, obdient, neat", and led a life "in harmony with the Croatian national community". Such requirements, rather than violently forcing people to comply with Ustasha authorities in Karlovac, allowed people corresponding with them to proactively and publicly conform to the state's ideological agenda. In the process, people who may not have cared or known whether they led a life beneficial to the national community or whether they possessed Aryan ancestry had to articulate descriptions of themselves using categories the state had set for them. Though some may have simply taken aprgmatic approach, viewing the process as a necessary bureaucratic requirement, it is possible that for others it involved a genuine redefinition of their identity resulting in a fundamental transformation in line with the demands of the state. In communicating with the Ustasha authorities, individual citizens learned to employ new discourse not only when they needed something from the state, but even when they objected to its activities and policies.
And Yeomans is not the only example of fruitfully using such an approach. When dealing with the history of my field – Nationalsocialism and the Holocaust – the power of German propaganda and the the transformation of ordinary lives in accordance with their ideology often plays a role. But what the power of propaganda and the transformation of life really meant is best researched in the form of a micro-history approach for only by tracing the ordinary lives of people can we truly observe how propaganda really affected people and indeed, just how their lives were transformed.
Michael Wildt in his book *Volksgemeinschaft als Selbstermächtigung. Gewalt gegen Juden in der deutschen Provinz 1919 bis 1939.* shows that the idea of the Volksgemeinschft – the Nationalsocialist racial community – was a big idea often tauted in propaganda but in the practice of its local implementation could have a multiplicity of meanings that mostly resulted in localized action such as violence against Jews in an effort to create said community through this action. Tracing these ideas shows that the idea of the Volksgemeinschaft was neither a mere propaganda term nor something that was set but something that was in a constant state of creation.
Of course, micro-history also needs to be tied back to the wider context since local developments and choices need to be contextualized in relation to wider developments but where the strength of the approach lies is definitely to portray dynamics and developments up close thus opening a perspective that we otherwise might not have gained when pursuing a mere top down approach and thus discover things we might not have seen otherwise. It can often allows to see history as it was observed by its contemporaries and that can contribute a lot to our understanding of it.
Further reading:
* Giovanni Levi: "On Microhistory". In Peter Burke: New Perspectives on Historical Writing.
* Carlo Ginzburg:"Microhistory, Two or Three Things That I Know about It". In: Critical Inquiry. 20 (1): 10, 1993.
* Jakob Tanner: Historische Anthropologie zur Einführung.
* Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie: Montaillou.
* Natalie Zemon Davis: The Return of Martin Guerre. (seriously, check this book and Ginzburg's Cheese and the Worm out, even if you are not that into medieval scholarship. They are just great and interesting reads.)
| [
"Carlo Ginzburg has written that a core principle of microhistory is making obstacles in sources, such as lacunae, part of the historical account. Relatedly, Levi has said that the point of view of the researcher becomes part of the account in microhistory. Other notable aspects of microhistory as a historical appr... |
how does video compression (such as on netflix) work exactly? if the quality is hurt by compression, why can't netflix have an option to stream compressed data to the device and have the device's cpu then decompress the data? | But... that *is* how they stream video. The server and the receiver negotiate what kind of compression the receiver is capable of, and the server sends the appropriate data. Netflix would literally be impossible if they were sending uncompressed streams. See [H.264 / MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding](_URL_1_) for history and details.
The pipe between you and the server is not a static quantity... it depends on other traffic on the line and how efficiently the receiving device is using its resources (like when you are watching video in a browser, but there are other browser pages or windows that are still active, or there are other programs running on your machine, or someone turns on the microwave and your WiFi stumbles). So Netflix even goes beyond the blanket compression of the entire stream to [selectively tweak](_URL_0_) the compression so the image doesn't chug when the bandwidth falters.
The word 'codec' originally stood for 'coder/decoder', but 'coding' effectively meant 'compression'. Nowadays the word is often used to stand for 'compression/decompression'. Some of that compression is built-in at the network hardware level, some of it is handled by the AV hardware on the receiver, or (if all else fails) the CPU. But for streaming video to happen *at all*, the content needs to be compressed.
Edit: spleling, brane, added AVC link, third paragraph | [
"Compression is useful because it reduces resources required to store and transmit data. Computational resources are consumed in the compression process and, usually, in the reversal of the process (decompression). Data compression is subject to a space–time complexity trade-off. For instance, a compression scheme ... |
herman cain's 9-9-9 plan | It regards taxes. 9% tax on corporate income, 9% tax on individual income, and a 9% national sales tax across the board.
of coarse this is impossible, but people are having fun with herman, and I think he is having fun too | [
"The 9–9–9 Plan was a tax proposal that was a centerpiece of Herman Cain's 2012 campaign for the Republican Party's nomination for president of the United States. It was introduced in August 2011. The 9–9–9 Plan would replace all current taxes (including the payroll tax, capital gains tax, and the estate tax) with ... |
What happened to the 170 German defenders of Tsingtao who were taken as POW's and chose to remain in Japan after WW1. | A small amount of information about the lives of those German POWs who chose to remain in Japan can be found in an account by Mahon Murphy of Trinity College Dublin, "Brücken, Beethoven und Baumkuchen: German and Austro-Hungarian Prisoners of War and the Japanese Home Front," published as a chapter in Bürgschwentner, Egger and Barth-Scalmani, Other Fronts, Other Wars: First World War Studies on the Eve of the Centennial, by Brill in 2014.
Murphy points out that 4,800 POWs were transported to Japan, and they remained interned for a long time – until early in 1921. This gave them more time to learn the local language (for the most part they were kept in less than arduous conditions, often near major population centres, and there seem to be many photos showing them mixing with their captors and even local people). Assimilation does not seem to have been a significant goal of most prisoners; they insisted, for example, on a European style diet heavy on beef, cabbage, cheese and potatoes, which were difficult for the Japanese to supply; the only cattle and milk available had to be brought down from Hokkaido. Eventually prisoners were given the chance to farm their own cattle. Murphy adds, however, that "there was much interest" in the prisoners and that locals would gather to hear the "red haired devils" sing drunken songs within the confines of their camps. At Hiroshima, a local Japanese football team was put together to play Japan's "first international" soccer match against the POWs. Exhibitions of German culture were also organised for the benefit of Japanese visitors to the camps - Murphy's chapter title refers to a first-ever performance in Japan of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (June 1918).
Local response seems to have been good natured curiosity - POWs were treated very much better in Japan in WWI than they would be in WWII. Several camps organised German food fairs which offered the first opportunity for Jaoanese to sample tomatoes, cured bacon, and German style beer.
Of the Germans who chose to remain in Japan after release, the most prominent was Karl Jucheim, who had run a sweet shop in Tsingtao (Qingdao) before the war, and used that expertise to set up what became a brand-name desert business selling traditional German baumkuchen - pastry desserts. These were a significant success, and his baumkuchen can still be found on sale in Japan today. Jucheim set up his business in Yokohama, then moved to Kobe after the great earthquake of 1923. He died in August 1945.
Less is known of the other 177 prisoners who stayed on,but several seem to have followed similar career paths. Hermann Wolschke set up a sausage factory. Hermann Ketel and August Lohmeyer both opened European style restaurants in Tokyo – the former lasted until 2004 and the latter is still doing business under Japanese ownership.Others became German teachers or worked in cultural relations.
Incidentally, Murphy draws much of his information from the Tsingtao War German Prisoners Research Society (that's a translation from the Japanese), which apparently publishes an annual journal – so I suspect there is more to find out about these unusual cultural migrants. | [
"Japanese casualties numbered 733 killed and 1,282 wounded; the British had 12 killed and 53 wounded. The German defenders lost 199 dead and 504 wounded. The German dead were buried at Tsingtao, while the remaining soldiers were transported to prisoner of war camps in Japan. The 4,700 German prisoners were treated ... |
how do telescopic sight or scope in sniper rifle work? the scope is few inches higher than the bullet line so how are the bullet hit the mark in the scope? | [Here is a helpful diagram](_URL_0_), that shows an exaggerated view of what's going on.
Bullets don't travel in a straight line, despite what it might look like. They travel up and then down in an arc, called a ballistic arc or path, just like throwing a football. Light on the other hand, for all intents and purposes, does travel in a straight line, which brings about your question. To make sure your bullet hits what you see through the scope you "zero" or "sight in" the scope or optic. This is where you pick a certain range, say 25m, where the bullet will be passing through that point where it looks like it is in the scope. It will then again pass through another point that is in line with the scope on its way down, say 300m.
A shooter can pick different ranges to zero his scope, and each one will have a point where it intersects with the straight line path of the sight or scope on its way up the arc, and again on the way down. Different bullets, different barrel lengths, different calibers, etc all change what these paths are, so a good shooter will make a table or chart for a specific rifle, scope, bullet weight, amount of gunpowder, etc and calculate where the bullet will be for that particular setup at any given range. | [
"Telescopic sights come with a variety of different reticles, ranging from the traditional crosshairs to complex reticles designed to allow the shooter to estimate accurately the range to a target, to compensate for the bullet drop, and to compensate for the windage required due to crosswinds. A user can estimate t... |
what is the most common underlying biological cause of male erectile dysfunction as one gets older? | I believe high blood pressure is one of the most common causes. Viagra was developed specifically to be a blood pressure med but turned out with the best side effect ever. | [
"Many men with Venogenic Erectile Dysfunction start having trouble with their erections from a young age. Common complaints include a chronic soft erection insufficient for sexual intercourse, position-dependent erectile rigidity, difficulty achieving erections, difficulty maintaining erections without constant man... |
Why is x^x only defined for x > 0? | That function is only *real* for negative x when x is a rational number with an odd denominator, so it exists at certain negative values but is not continuously real. (-1)^-1 is a simple example, just equalling -1. For other values it is purely imaginary, e.g. (-0.5)^(-0.5) is the square root of -2, or -1.41 i.
In general though it will yield a complex number, with real and imaginary parts. [This article](_URL_0_) talks about how you can use Euler's identity to figure out the real and imaginary parts of x^x for negative x. Because there are many ways to define the logarithm of a complex number, if you plot many of them, the function starts to trace out a spindle. The absolute value of the function over negative x is just (-x)^x. | [
"If \"x\" and \"y\" are integers, rationals, or real numbers, then \"xy\"=0 implies \"x\"=0 or \"y\"=0. Suppose \"abc\"=0. Then, substituting \"a\" for \"x\" and \"bc\" for \"y\", we learn \"a\"=0 or \"bc\"=0. Then we can substitute again, letting \"x\"=\"b\" and \"y\"=\"c\", to show that if \"bc\"=0 then \"b\"=0 o... |
Were all those that were sentenced to crucifiction forced to carry their cross, or was that special for Christ? | Semi-related follow up: Is it correct to refer to him as Christ in a historical context? I would think historians would prefer 'Jesus of Nazareth', no? | [
"There are also two criminals, crucified on either side of him and, as in Luke, one begs Jesus for forgiveness. The writer says Jesus is silent as they crucify him, \"...as if in no pain.\" Jesus is labeled the King of Israel on his cross and his clothes are divided and gambled over.\n",
"According to The Way, th... |
Did Samuel Adams,as an individual, really alter the way of the on coming revolution in the American colonies? | Two reasons - one dealing with the events of the past, the other dealing with how we remember the events of the past.
1) Sam Adams and John Hancock were the major organizers and bankrollers of the Sons of Liberty in Boston. The conflicts in and around Boston, sparked by the Sons of Liberty, led to the outbreak of fighting at Lexington and Concord, which pushed the colonies into open war with Britain.
2) While Boston was often at the "forefront" of the Patriot movement, they were not the only game in town. However, when the mythology of the United States was being crafted in the 19th century, it was more pleasing to focus on the liberty-minded small farmers of Massachusetts than the bitter class conflicts of New York or the racial tensions of Virginia. As such, "layman's"/pop/establishment history focuses almost exclusively on pre-Revolutionary Boston, with the other colonies appearing as an afterthought after Bunker Hill. This is one of the reasons why every schoolchild still learns "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere," but no one knows who Isaac Sears or Lord Dunmore are. | [
"Parliament passed the Coercive Acts in 1774, at which time Adams attended the Continental Congress in Philadelphia which was convened to coordinate a colonial response. He helped guide Congress towards issuing the Continental Association in 1774 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and he helped draft the ... |
Why doesn't the DRC speak Dutch? | In short: French was the language of administration, law, and education around the time of the colonization of the Congo.
When Belgium was absorbed into the French First Republic the French language was made the universal language. Administrative documents and education were both handled in French.
Following the creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, the Dutch King William I reversed this, with Dutch being the main language instead. This attempt at enforcing Dutch failed for the most part.
With the Belgian Independence proclaimed in 1830, French once again regained its position as administrative language.
Some ten years after Belgian Independence, Dutch speakers became more consciousness of the language divide, and campaigned for equal treatment.
In 1873 law becomes bilingual, in 1878 administration, in 1883 education, and in 1898, both languages are made equal as official languages.
Despite de jure equality, French remained the language of the elite. Even as late as 1940 it wasn't uncommon for officers in Flemish units to only speak French, for example.
Source:
_URL_0_ | [
"Dutch is an official language of the Caribbean islands that remain under Dutch sovereignty. However, Dutch is not the dominant language on these islands. On the islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire, a creole based on Portuguese and West African languages known as Papiamento is predominant, while in Sint Maarten, ... |
Do other animal species have an eye colour diversity similar to humans'? | I don't know about eyes specifically, but differences in coloring (or indeed expression of individual traits) of any external body part within a species is just part of the normal genetic diversity. Just look at the different color schemes in horses (even within a single breed). So if this can be true for hair and skin it'll be reasonable to assume somewhere it happens for eyes as well. | [
"The basis for this variation is the number of cone types that differ between species. Mammals in general have color vision of a limited type, and usually have red-green color blindness, with only two types of cones. Humans, some primates, and some marsupials see an extended range of colors, but only by comparison ... |
Why are there no hair on our palms, the middle of our arms and bottom of our feet? | Perhaps a better phrasing would be: why is hair in certain parts of our bodies much more dense than in other parts, and why are the areas listed by OP so thinly populated by hair? | [
"The glabrous (hairless) skin on the front of the hand, the palm, is relatively thick and can be bent along the hand's flexure lines where the skin is tightly bound to the underlying tissue and bones. Compared to the rest of the body's skin, the hands' palms (as well as the soles of the feet) are usually lighter — ... |
where does the debt go when someone or a company declares bankruptcy? | Any assets of the person or company will be sold where possible.
After that, whatever money there is will be split between the various people that are owed money. In most countries, there is some kind of order of priority, for example the taxman might be paid before everyone else.
After that, any remaining debt is written off.
What does that mean? Well, imagine you lent me £10, and I promise to repay you next weekend. But next weekend I don't have the money. Nor the weekend after. Eventually, you realise you'll never see that money again. You write the debt off. That's what happens when someone declares bankruptcy and there aren't enough assets to settle all the debts. | [
"A debtor in possession in United States bankruptcy law is a person or corporation who has filed a bankruptcy petition, but remains in possession of property upon which a creditor has a lien or similar security interest. A corporation which continues to operate its business under Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings i... |
Is there gold, silver, diamonds and other precious metals and minerals on Mars? If so, would they differ chemically from those found on Earth? | Most mineral resources on Earth are formed by processes that concentrate low (parts per million or billion sometimes) amounts of metals into grades that are economically viable. For things like gold or platinum, economically viable means 3-5 ppm or even lower depending on the geology and other conditions. Things like iron, nickel and copper may be considered "ore-grade" at 10 or 20% Fe, 3-5% Ni or 0.5-1% Cu.
The concentration processes (generally) involve either straight up magma chemistry (Ni, Cu, Co, Cr, V, Pt, Pd, other metals, diamonds), the interaction of water with magma (Au, Ag, Cu, Sn, Pb, Zn....many metals) or the interaction of water and the rock (U, Pb, Zn, Se, Al, Ni). The first process really only needs enough magma, though there are some particular chemical conditions that need to happen for metals to be deposited...Hawaii doesn't have any magmatic Ni-Cu deposits though it has plenty of basalt magma. The second process needs water-bearing magma generated by subduction and the third process needs copious amounts of water flowing through permeable rocks and favorable redox conditions.
So for Mars, there are areas of copious basaltic magmatism (the giant shield volcanoes) that superficially resemble areas of basaltic magmatism on Earth, so magmatic deposits of Ni, Cu and maybe even platinum-group elements (in any old, stratified magma chambers) are possible. Magmatic/Hydrothermal deposits like most gold and silver deposits are unlikely due to the lack of plate tectonics on Mars. The third process is uncertain and depends on if there was enough water and the right chemistry during Mars' early history. That third process is also a bit murky because some metal deposits appear to have been created with biological input. However, if any of these processes occurred on Mars, the chemical nature of the ore would be pretty similar to Earth. Certain processes will have been affected by redox conditions, differing atmospheric pressure and lack(?) of biology but these effects would tend to create more physical (ore texture, distribution in the ore body) differences than chemical.
Diamonds require a certain type of volcanism that is mediated by both plate tectonics and the chemistry of the mantle, and you'll have to find a Mars mantle chemist to talk about that.
TL;DR: There won't be a Gold Rush: Olympus Mons spin-off on the History Channel anytime soon. While this info relies on some assumptions and simplifications, the right processes to concentrate metals into ore just haven't operated on Mars. Asteroids on the other hand...
Source: I'm an economic geologist. | [
"The Mars landers Viking I, Viking II, Pathfinder, Opportunity Rover, and Spirit Rover identified aluminium, iron, magnesium, and titanium in the Martian soil. Opportunity found small structures, named \"blueberries\" which were found to be rich in hematite, a major ore of iron. These blueberries could easily be ga... |
Do you digest food that you eat commonly faster than other food? | It is actually true that the human digestive system uses many different digestive enzymes to digest different types of nutrients, and that it will adapt to a habitual diet, secreting more of the enzyme that is most often needed. That is why an abrupt change of diet, such as from a vegetarian to a meat eating diet, can cause indigestion. The difference between pasta and pizza is not as great - both contain a lot of carbohydrates, and if the pasta is served with a meat sauce, it can be extremely similar to pizza in terms of its biochemical composition (as compared to a pepperoni pizza, the most usual kind). But hypothetically, you might have pasta with no cheese, and pizza with mozzarella cheese, and perhaps you will turn out to be lactose intolerant. So it could matter. | [
"If the carbohydrate meal consists of a food (which doesn't need to be carbohydrate itself), that requires prolonged vigorous chewing, and then some time to be digested, for instance parboiled long grain rice, chewing may suddenly become very slow and difficult halfway through the meal.\n",
"Many fast foods are r... |
What was the extent of Roman-Sino relations, and when was the closest point of true cooperation and/or alliance between the two powers? | I'm afraid that most of your questions are unanswerable - it's not possible to know what benefits or hindrances the Chinese and the Romans would have had, since they did not directly interact in a huge, high level way.
The interactions they *did* have, though, mostly existed through trade. Exotic ambassadors from the East did come to Rome, which are unfortunately recorded only through peripheral accounts - people who saw, say, an Indian ambassador with the Roman Emperor, would write about it with excitement and speculation, but we have no detailed records of those meetings. You're looking for China specifically, though, so I'll keep myself from segueing off into Indo-Roman relations and talk about specifically about the Chinese Empire. True contacts between Rome and China started through India, primarily (and a *liiiiiiittle* bit of overland trade, but that was way outclassed by India). Roman elites discovered silk, for which they paid top dollar. One of the other top commodities? Steel, which the Romans thought was just "good quality iron." As Pliny writes (*Natural History*, 34.41, translation snagged from [Perseus](_URL_2_)):
> But of all the different kinds of iron, the palm of excellence is awarded to that which is made by the Seres, [**This is the Chinese**] who send it to us with their tissues [**silks**] and skins; next to which, in quality, is the Parthian iron. Indeed, none of the other kinds of iron are made of the pure hard metal, a softer alloy being welded with them all. In our part of the world, a vein of ore is occasionally found to yield a metal of this high quality, as in Noricum for instance; [**meteorites**]
The beginning of Chinese diplomatic records regarding Rome, however, start in the 70s CE, after Ban Chao defeated the Xiongnu, bringing a wide swathe of territory under Han control.
At this time, China's communication with central Asia (Scythians and other steppe peoples) opened back up, and more rumours started coming in about a great power in the West, which the Chinese referred to as *Da Qin* - or "Greater China" - and they are described as follows:
> The people of *Da Qin* are all tall and honest. They are very like the people of China, and that is why this State is referred to as *Da Qin*.^1
and
> The common people are tall and virtuous like the Chinese, but they wear Western clothes. They have always wanted to communicate with China, but Parthia is jealous of their profits and will not allow them to pass (through to the Han Empire).
The whole honourable trader idea was certainly borne out from their contacts with Indian merchants, who *loved* Roman traders. The Romans traded with extremely pure silver coins, which were considered to be honest, and they bought a *huge* amount of trade goods annually. No seriously, their consumption levels were kind of absurd - even the Chinese heard rumours that that they "gathered all the precious and rare things from other foreign kingdoms." That rumour isn't entirely inaccurate, either. The Romans liked nice things.
The Chinese were understandably intrigued by these rumours and, in 97 CE, they sent an ambassador to attempt to find - and possibly ally with - the Romans in an attempt to secure their own hegemony over central Asia. Nota bene - the steppe peoples were *really* bad at the whole "being subdued" thing. See: Rome's difficulties with Parthia. Anywho. So they sent a mission headed by a man named Gan Ying, who knew that the Roman empire existed. Somewhere "west of the Indian Ocean." Now, that's...a tall order for anyone, because there's a *long* way between the Indian Ocean and Rome. And unfortunately, they made the mistake of sending him over land in an attempt to remain as incognito as possible.
He did make an excellent attempt. He took a path along the very southern border of Iran, skirting Parthia's influence as much as possible (note that the Chinese already knew that there were....issues between Rome and Parthia) and, after a (very) long and difficult journey (2! deserts), he made it to the [kingdom of Mesene](_URL_1_), on the Persian Gulf. Again, remember that he had *no idea* about the geography from here - he was going totally blindly, and was devastated when he realized that he wasn't there yet. But he was determined not to fail his mission, and so prepped for a sea journey from Mesene, around the Arabian Peninsula, to go into the Red Sea. He was *yay* close to [Roman territory](_URL_0_) (Yes, that map is from 69, but the conquests of Trajan hadn't happened quite yet. It does show you how relatively short the jaunt between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the Levant is, though).
Unfortunately, merchants being merchants, they saw a rich foreigner who had no idea where he was or where he was going. So they told him that the journey around the Arabian peninsula might take up to three years, so he had to buy a ship for at least that long, as well as all the supplies to go with it. This was the last straw for the now (terrifically lost and homesick) ambassador, who promptly just returned to China and reported that Rome was unreachable, except by a long and dangerous sea crossing.
There are other, scattered reports of Roman traders making it into the Han Empire proper, but no significant diplomatic relation was ever established, and the vast majority of Silk Road trade between the two empires took place through intermediaries.
Obviously, there are plenty of potential *ifs* to this story. For a well-researched short story/novel, take note of the technology that each side had to offer (for example, the Romans would have LOVED the superior crossbows of the Han), the potential geopolitical consequences of an actual alliance, and the fact that it honestly wouldn't have taken much more than a nudge of good fortune for Gan Ying to have reached Rome. Communication was obviously a huge barrier when he was being abused by cheeky merchants. But the implications of his being able to potentially meet with Trajan at the beginning of his reign...those are unquestionably large.
On the other hand, that's entirely speculative, since the reality is as big a buzzkill as someone quitting after 90% of a marathon ;)
1. This quote, like most of this post, is sourced from Raoul McLaughlin's *Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India, and China*. If you'd like his citations to the works from which he got these quotes, please feel free to ask :) | [
"Sino-Roman relations comprised the mostly indirect contact, flow of trade goods, information, and occasional travellers between the Roman Empire and Han Empire of China, as well as between the later Eastern Roman Empire and various Chinese dynasties. These empires inched progressively closer in the course of the R... |
Can anyone tell me more information about this WW2 German prisoner dog tag? | We do have this handy [Guide on Military Identification](_URL_0_) as part of the resources available for our users where you can get more info.
What this dog tag can tell is your grandfather's POW number – 50 48 – and that he was in the Stalag (Stammlager – the name for German POW camps for troops and NCOs) Luft (meaning Luftwaffe resp. for aircrew) Nr. 4. Below it says "KGF (Kriegsgefangenen – POW) LGR (Lager – camp) 4 d (der – of) LW (Luftwaffe – German Airforce)", so POW camp Nr. 4 of the Luftwaffe, which is synonymous with Stalag Luft 4.
Stalag Luft IV was a German POW camp in Gross Tychow, Pomerania (now Tychowo, Poland), opened in May 1944, where the conditions according to the Red Cross report on the camp were to be considered bad. In February of 1945 about 8000 of inamtes were forced on what was called "The black march", an evacuation march to Stalag 357 near Fallingbostel, which lasted until the beginning of April, only to be then forced on another march until they were liberated by British forces near the Elbe on May 2, 1945. | [
"During World War II there was a dog called Nigger, a black Labrador belonging to Royal Air Force Wing Commander Guy Gibson. In 1943, Gibson led the successful Operation Chastise attack on dams in Nazi Germany. The dog's name was used as a single codeword whose transmission conveyed that the Möhne dam had been brea... |
what happened to the economy the first time the government raised the minimum wage? | Looking at the first time might not do too much for us, maybe more interesting to see what happened when the states got free to set their own minimum wages as it creates a bit of a ideal laboratory for us.
in between 1997-2007 the federal minimum wage didn't change but states fluctuated theirs and the overall consensus is that raising the minimum wage in no way leads to fewer jobs in the economy. You can read more about it in the study *"Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?", the Center for Economic and Policy Research*
You can also read more about it from *"Minimum Wage Effects Across State Borders", Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley* This study compared all neighboring counties in the U.S. located on different sides of a state border with different minimum wage levels between 1990 and 2006 and found no adverse employment effects from higher minimum wages.
So we know that raising the minimum wage does not negatively affect employment, so what about the other stuff?
Well, raising the minimum wage generates several benefits, it has been shown to reduce staff turnover and it also increases the disposable income of low wage earners stimulating consumption. An added benefit is also that a lot of minimum wage earners will be able to get off government aid, this lessens the stress of state finances.
**DISCLAIMER** This is a simplified view on a minimum wage increase, although not incorrect it is a complex issue and I urge anyone to take a in depth look on your own, ask questions and clarify opinions. | [
"Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.54 (in 2014 dollars). Progressives believe that stagnating wages perpetuate income inequality and that raising the minimum wage is a necessary step to combat inequality. If the minimum wage grew at the rate of productivity growth in the United States, i... |
why do crickets get quiet around humans, considering we aren't one of their predators? | When a lumbering monstrosity twenty thousand times your size clomps past, you may want to hush for a second and let the beast pass without trouble.
Sure a human is unlikely to stoop down and eat a cricket these days, but that's not true for all animals. Laying low while unfathomably bigger animals pass is a good survival strategy that most flightless insects have adopted. | [
"Crickets are preyed on by bats during the night while they fly from one place to another. Avoidance behaviors by crickets were first reported in 1977 by Popov and Shuvalov. They also demonstrated that crickets, like moths, fly away from bats once they’ve heard their echolocating calls, an example of negative phono... |
why do sinus problems sometimes cause headaches? | Sinuses are air filled pockets in your skull. When you get certain infections, the inflammation and mucus built up nearby will put pressure on the sinuses. That causes pain, in the usual way that increased pressure will on any part of your body. | [
"If one or more of the paired paranasal sinuses or air cavities becomes inflamed, it leads to an infection called sinusitis. The term \"sinusitis\" means an inflammation of one or more of the sinus cavities. This inflammation causes an increase in internal pressure within these areas. The pressure is often experien... |
Why were WW 2 planes so distinctively painted but tanks and battleships had plain matte paint jobs? | Warships tended to have a broad variety of paint schemes, matching the diversity of aircraft. While many were painted in simple, utilitarian schemes, others would receive complex, disruptive patterns in a wide variety of colours.
During peacetime, Royal Navy vessels were painted in simple schemes. Ships in British waters would be painted in a dark grey/blue colour, designated 507B (at the start of the war, this would be replaced with the less reflective 507A, which was otherwise the same shade). On most foreign stations, they would be painted a lighter grey, 507C. Ships on tropical stations would be painted white. These gave a smart appearance, were simple to maintain, and reflected or absorbed heat from the sun as needed. Once war began, most ships would remain in these colours, at least initially. At this point, camouflage was not centralised by the Admiralty; instead, it left paint schemes down to individual captains. Some camouflage schemes were promulgated by the Admiralty, but take-up was limited.
The first RN vessel to receive camouflage paint was the destroyer *Grenville*, painted in a disruptive scheme at Harwich in December 1939; the rest of her flotilla soon followed. Unfortunately, we don't have an accurate idea of the colours used on her, but it's likely that she was painted in a grey scheme using the paint available. As the flotilla was engaged in escorting coastal convoys, she might also have received some khaki or green paint. In April 1940, a brown and green scheme was proposed for the ships of Home Fleet. Intended to conceal the ships when at anchor in Scapa Flow, it proved to be useless at sea during the Norwegian campaign. Other ships participating in the campaign used more effective schemes; [*Devonshire*'s scheme](_URL_6_), using lozenges of 507A on a 507C background was particularly notable. Most ships would return to their 507B colouring over the summer but interest in camouflage remained. Over time, four main unofficial schemes developed. The first, worn by a number of destroyers, was a return to the 'dazzle' schemes of WWI, with bold patterns of black, grey and white paint. The captain of HMS *Repulse* designed a two-tone 'contrast' scheme, using large square patches of 507A and 507C. It can be seen [here](_URL_10_) on *Repulse*, and [here](_URL_11_), on *Warspite* (in the foreground), in slightly modified form. In Autumn 1940, Louis Mountbatten observed that a liner his destroyer flotilla was escorting seemed well camouflaged at dawn and dusk, a fact he attributed to the pink paint she retained from her peacetime livery. Mountbatten adopted the colour for his flotilla, and it soon saw more widespread use. Many ships used a two-tone version of the 'Mountbatten Pink' camouflage, with a lighter and darker shade - [*Kenya*](_URL_13_) is a good example. The colour was made by mixing the red paint used for the hull with 507B, producing a greyish pink. It was dropped on larger vessels from 1942, but was very popular for smaller vessels. The last amateur scheme was the most famous, and successful of the bunch. It was developed by Peter Scott (son of Robert Falcon Scott of Antarctic fame, and later founder of the World Wildlife Fund), a naturalist serving aboard HMS *Broke* while she was escorting convoys in the North Atlantic. Scott used his experience spotting wildlife to devise a more effective camouflage scheme. Rather than using darker colours like grey, Scott suggested the use of light colours, mainly white, light grey, light blue and light green. These would fade into the overcast conditions typical in the North Atlantic. *Broke* was soon painted to Scott's ideas, despite much scoffing by onlookers. There are claims that these onlookers were proved wrong when *Broke* was involved in an accidental collision with another destroyer, whose captain claimed that *Broke*'s paint scheme was so effective that he hadn't seen her until it was too late, but I can't corroborate this. Either way, Scott's scheme found popularity amongst crews in the Western Approaches. In the Mediterranean, meanwhile, things were less organised. Officers here took a more enthusiastic approach to camouflage, and to scrounging paint. There were few uniform schemes, with a broad variety in terms of complexity and colouring. Most tended to be simple schemes, as might be expected from those produced by amateurs, but there were a few masterpieces of complexity. Black paint on a pale grey (typically the light MS4 shade) in a variety of patterns was a common colour scheme, referred to as the 'Alexandria' type. Few ships carried the same scheme, and ships often had different designs on their port and starboard sides.
Faced with this burgeoning profusion of schemes, the Admiralty formed a camouflage section in October 1940. A number of artists, led by Claude Muncaster, were recruited. They were handed a rather vague directive to produce effective camouflage, and left to get on with it. Working with [small-scale](_URL_5_) [models](_URL_12_), they produced a new set of paints to complement 507A, B and C. These included several shades of grey (MS1 - 4), two shades of blue (B4 and B5) and a green (MS4A). Using these, they then produced individualised colour schemes for a number of capital ships. [*Queen Elizabeth*](_URL_14_) was the first to receive this scheme in January 1941. By the end of the year, they were common on capital ships, carriers and cruisers. However, it was found that these schemes, which used multiple small areas of different shades, tended to blend into a single homogeneous mass, as can be seen in the linked image of *Queen Elizabeth*. New patterns were produced moving into 1942, which were more effective. Meanwhile, Scott's camouflage scheme was adopted and formalised as the 'Western Approaches' scheme, used on destroyers and smaller engaged on ASW duties. The Western Approaches scheme used three colours, white, light green, and a pale blue, with the upperworks and upper part of the hull in white and green and blue areas breaking up the waterline. Examples of the Western Approaches scheme would include [this image](_URL_4_) of *Trillium*, or [this colourised image](_URL_2_) of *Regina*.
In 1942, the Camouflage Section began to fully enforce their new schemes. With the experience gained during 1941, they produced a detailed set of instructions on camouflage. Designs were produced for every class of ship in the fleet. The designs prevailing in 1942 were more simple than those suggested in 1941, with large areas of individual shades, fewer colours used, and simpler shapes. Furthermore, they were split into two main types: 'light disruptive' for use in areas where the prevailing weather was cloudy, and 'dark disruptive' for sunnier areas. Clear examples of the 'dark disruptive' type can be seen in [this image](_URL_7_), while *Trinidad* can be seen in the 'light disruptive' type [here](_URL_1_). These designs were widely adopted. By the middle of 1942, most ships would be in either Admiralty disruptive style, or in a Western Approaches design. However, the pressures of the war began to affect paint production. Shortages of pigment, especially in green, led to further simplifications. Many Western Approaches designs of 1942 dropped the green areas, using just blue and white, as seen in [this image of *Bluebell*](_URL_9_). A few ships were even just painted pure white, though only during the winter months. For 1943, the Admiralty introduced a new set of paints, which used less green. Instead, four grey paints, G5, G10, G20 and G45 and three blue paints, B15, B30 and B55 were used. The colour schemes also saw a similar simplification. Most used just three colours, with blue seeing much less use on large ships. Greater use was made of contrast, with the aim being to break up the outline of the ship rather than to conceal it, as can be seen on [*Newfoundland*](_URL_3_) here. A modern interpretation of this scheme is seen on [HMS *Belfast*](_URL_8_), now preserved as a museum ship. As 1943 moved into 1944, there were a number of disagreements about the value of camouflage given the increasing presence of radar. Radar could detect ships regardless of camouflage, and could, with IFF systems, tell friend from foe, instantly obsoleting camouflage paint; against this, though, were the facts that radar could not be used effectively in all weathers, and often had to be switched off to avoid the enemy detecting its emissions. While the Admiralty generally swung towards the side favouring radar, it still recognised the value of camouflage. A simple camouflage scheme, applied universally to all ships, was produced. This consisted simply of a darker grey bar along the waterline, with the upperworks and ends of the hull in a lighter grey, and can be seen on [Anson](_URL_0_) here. This was the last Admiralty camouflage scheme of the war. Following the war, the RN reverted to its simple greys. | [
"Some United States Army Air Forces aircraft used a variation of the British camouflage schemes (mostly on aircraft originally built to RAF orders) but most USAAF aircraft did not use multiple shades on the top side of the aircraft. Instead, most were camouflaged in olive drab above and neutral gray below, though s... |
why is the legal limit 0.08? | The original limit was 0.15, and this was set based on a study done by the American Medical Association in 1938. The group MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) came along and lobbied hard to lower limits, first to 0.10 and then to 0.08. *This is not based on any science.* They'd really like to have prohibition back, and they are just working the limit down little by little.
In 2010, 70% of drivers involved in a drunk driving fatality had a BAC of 0.15 or higher.
| [
"On May 14, 2013, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that all 50 states lower the benchmark for determining when a driver is legally drunk from 0.08 blood-alcohol content to 0.05. The idea is part of an initiative to eliminate drunk driving, which accounts for about a third of all road deaths. In ... |
Why do electrons have a constant mass? | When an atom absorbs a photon, and an electron transitions into a higher energy level, the mass of the electron stays the same. It’s the mass of the **entire atom** which is increased a little bit. | [
"From this, can be taken to be given roughly by the proton mass. This even applies in the white dwarf case (that of the Chandrasekhar limit) for which the fermionic particles providing the pressure are electrons. This is because the mass density is provided by the nuclei in which the neutrons are at most about as n... |
Why were Nazi spies so ineffective? | Abwehr, the primary German foreign intelligence service, was phenomenally ineffective against the western allies probably because [Wilhelm Canaris](_URL_0_), it's leader, hated Hitler and attempted to murder or depose him over a dozen times. Against the western allies, Abwehr *failed on purpose*.
In the East, Abwehr was actually remarkably effective. Notably, on the eve of operation Barbarossa Canaris produced a complete map of how the soviets had deployed their forces. It's believed that he procured this map from the British, by *asking for it*. He had communicated and co-operated with MI6 as early as 1938, asking the British to declare war on Germany over the Sudentenland crisis so that he could gain support to topple Hitler. The Polish had decoded the Soviet codes, and transferred this knowledge to UK when Germany took over Poland. When Canaris asked for information on Soviets, the British believed that giving it would help draw the USSR into the war and reduce pressure on themselves. | [
"The intelligence gathering efforts of Nazi Germany were largely ineffective. Berlin operated two espionage networks against the United States. Both suffered from careless recruiting, inadequate planning, and faulty execution. The FBI captured bungling spies, while poorly designed sabotage efforts all failed. Hitle... |
the different types of wine and how they are paired with food. | Ok so you've got your red wines and your white wines. In America we tend to call the wine by the actual species of grape in it: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnary, Sauvignon Blanc. They all sound exotic because they came from overseas - nothing snobbish. And of course you can have wines that are a blend of different grapes to get different tastes (or to make cheap grapes into cheap wine that tastes ok. Like generic table wine.)
In places like France the wine will be named after the place it's grown: Bordeaux, Burgundy, etc... This tripped me up for years, but I tend to stick with California wines anymore (because I live here and take wine tours here)
Traditionally white wines go with lighter foods: fish and poultry. Where reds go with heavier dishes: beef and lamb. But it's pretty much poppycock. Really you just want a wine that compliments what you're eating - and to learn that you just need to drink a lot of different wines (or ask your waiter, eventually you'll get an idea what you like.) The way I think of it is this: if you sipped some wine and ate some food at the same time - would they taste awful together? Like something really watery and sweet with a mouthful of bratwurst and mustard. Likewise you don't want to drown a piece of nice fish with a giant red wine that's overpowering. The wine should follow the food and make the food seem even tastier while cleansing your pallet for your next bite. You shouldn't take a shock to the system drinking it.
Things I like: Grenache Blanc which is a light, crisp white wine that's often very green apple-y. It's great for a warm summer day picnic. It goes great with picnic snacks like cheese and crackers and fruit. Everything is light on the tongue. Who wants a giant meat-pizza out in the hot sun?
Pinot Noir: a lighter red that's very easy to drink. You can have a glass by itself (or a bottle). Sit on the patio at night and chug some down. Goes great with most dinner foods. Lamb. Grilled artichokes.
Merlot: makes great wines that tend to be cheap. If I need to serve lots of wine to friends or at a party, I'll probably get a case of merlot. Goes with most stuff. Maybe a little sweet however.
Cabernet Sauvignon: the classic red wine. Tends to be tannic - leaves your mouth slightly dry on the finish - but not in a cottonmouth way - the kind of way you want to start eating again. I tend not not like cab unless it's a really exceptional bottle - and then I fall in love all over again. It tends to be a stronger taste and feel in your mouth so it likes to go with equally strong food.
Hope it helps. Also "Wine for Dummies" is an AWESOME book. Check it out. | [
"While there are many books, magazines and websites with detailed guidelines on how to pair food and wine, most food and wine experts believe that the most basic element of food and wine pairing is understanding the balance between the \"weight\" of the food and the weight (or body) of the wine. Heavy, robust wines... |
why does the fed matter so much? and what sort of power do they have over the us economy? | The Federal Reserve matters because it is the Central Bank of the United States and the lender of last resort for all of our other banks. It has a great deal of power over the economy, primarily through the buying and selling of Treasury Bonds and setting the "ground rules" that all other banks follow.
It's worth noting that people tend to massively misunderstand what the Fed is. It is not a Private Bank, it is a weird mix of Private and Public. It's Board of Directors is appointed by the President, but the Fed does not have to seek approval for its actions from Congress or the President. So it is an independent agency that ultimately acts on its primary mission - keep the US economy ticking along nicely. | [
"The Fed, which is the central bank of the United States, conducts monetary policy primarily by targeting a certain value for the federal funds rate. If the Fed wishes to move to, for example, a more expansionary monetary policy, it conducts open market operations so as to expand the monetary base, which includes p... |
what is difference in coffee roasts such as medium and light? | There's actually an incredible amount of science that goes into coffee believe it or not. Light vs dark is the same concept as cooking a steak, you can have it rare, or well done depending on your preferences. Different coffees from different regions are also better suited for different roasts. A lot of African coffees are very "bright" or acidic as another commetnor mentioned and theyre usually better as light-medium roasts. Due to this, they are also very sweet and even fruity tasting. while coffees like colombian, mexican, and some asian coffees are better as dark roasts and are heavier on chocolatey notes. There can be over 100 different sugars and compounds in a coffee bean so manipulating the heat and roast time can make a huge difference(even 2 degrees farenheit can dramatically change flavor).
Need anything else answered just ask for specifics
Source: spent 2 years roasting for one of the most renowned coffee gurus in california | [
"BULLET::::- \"Dark roast\" coffee tastes subjectively stronger than medium roasts. Standards are based on medium roasts, and the equivalent strength for a dark roast requires using a lower brewing ratio.\n",
"The degree of roast has an effect upon coffee flavor and body. Darker roasts are generally bolder becaus... |
why is it more feasible to keep existing customers than getting new ones? | You are a source of income for them. They will try and get as much as they can from you but will accept less if it stops you leaving.
If say from your current deal they might be making £10 a week off you then that is great for them. If you leave they will make £0 a week off you. So if you threaten to leave they will try and keep you, even if you have to be reduced to say £4 profit a week it is better for them than losing a source of income completely up until a point where it would be a loss to keep you on. | [
"4. Retention: It is usually cheaper to retain old customer rather than seeking new ones. A lot of businesses are not bothered that much about the customers that already have purchased its products/services and they mainly focus on attracting new ones, however a customer who has been with a company over a long time... |
what's the difference between voxel and point cloud based graphics? | They're essentially the same thing, points in a 3D space like you said. Voxels are generally thought of as the "pixels" of a 3D grid of known dimensions, say 512x512x512. Like how pixels are a unit of a 2D grid. Point clouds are generally used is a world space of undefined dimensions, like cm or mm in XYZ as floating point coordinates, but they can just add easily be integer coordinates just like in a voxel volume. It's trivial to convert a point cloud to a voxel volume and vice versa, so they are equivalent mathematically. I think the easiest way to think of it is that voxels are an element of a space with predefined, quantized dimensions, and points of a point cloud are elements of a space with undefined, non-quantized dimensions. Or maybe more succinctly, voxels are elements of a specific, defined voxel volume, and point clouds are just a collection of points. | [
"While voxels provide the benefit of precision and depth of reality, they are typically large data sets and are unwieldy to manage given the bandwidth of common computers. However, through efficient compression and manipulation of large data files, interactive visualization can be enabled on consumer market compute... |
why does a heavy night of drinking feel like such a dice-roll for how you'll feel in the morning? some mornings i feel like death while others i've never been more comfortable. | I think a lot of it depends on what activities you were doing in the first place, and also your general health before you started drinking. Most of the times I feel bad after drinking is because ive only actually had 4 or 5 hours sleep after a night of dancing and running around etc. If you were drinking water during the night you might combat some of the effects of dehydration, same goes if you've eaten some food. If you throw up the alcohol hasnt always had time to enter your system and so you might feel better in the morning, plus your stomach isnt full of all the crap you have inevitably eaten over the course of the night.
Also alcohol contains a lot of histamine, if you have hayfever and its during the season for pollen alcohol will make your allergies go crazy, but its worse in the spring/summer compared to winter. Its why I always take an anti-histamine before I go out drinking.
TL;DR lots of variables go into how you feel the next day, some you can control, others you cant. | [
"It also appears in non-hypersomniac persons, for example after a too short night of sleep. Fatigue and consumption of alcohol or hypnotics can cause sleep drunkenness as well. It is also associated with irritability : people who get angry shortly before sleeping tend to suffer from sleep drunkenness. \n",
"In a ... |
why is ellen pao hated? | Since the subreddit ban wave (Fatpeople hate ect.) reddit decided she was satan, and never really came back from that.
Some people believe she's commercializing reddit and steering it away from its roots.
Personally I don't think we have the information to read her character one way or the other. | [
"She is the daughter of the school principal and disliked by most of the students for that reason and because she is nosy and likes to gossip. She has a habit of getting even in a drastic way when men scorn her. She often speaks in English.\n",
"Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for Americ... |
Why is the electric field on the outside of two parallel plates equal to zero? | Well, the electric field is not zero. It's only zero if the plates are assumed to be infinite. So consider an infinite plate with a homogeneous charge density. Gauss's law (Poisson's equation) immediately implies that the electric field is piecewise constant on each side of the plate. Symmetry dictates that the field has the same strength on both sides. The field points toward the plate if the density is negative, and away from the plate if the density is positive.
So a positively charged plate has an electric field like:
^^^^^^
||||||
++++++
||||||
vvvvvv
A negative charged plate has an electric field like:
||||||
vvvvvv
------
^^^^^^
||||||
So a parallel plate capacitor (which consists of a positively charged plate some parallel distance from a negatively charged plate) has an electric field which is the sum of these fields. The fields between the plates are in the same direction, but the fields outside the plates are in opposite directions. If the charge density on either plate is the same in magnitude, then the field outside the plates cancels exactly, and the field between them is doubled.
------
^^^^^^
||||||
++++++ | [
"These pictures resemble the field lines of a positive and a negative electrical charge located at the fixed points, because the circular flow lines subtend a constant angle between the two fixed points.\n",
"where Δ\"V\" is the potential difference between the plates and \"d\" is the distance separating the plat... |
What exactly does it mean for the electromagnetic force to be carried by photons? | The best analogy I've seen is that it's like two boats moving on a lake. A moving boat has a wake that forms behind it, and that wake influences the motion of the other boat. Except instead of a lake it's an electromagnetic field, the boats are charged particles, and the perturbations that pass through the water as wake waves are photons. This is not the same as two charged particles shooting photons at each other like tiny lasers.
_URL_0_ | [
"The photon is a type of elementary particle, the quantum of the electromagnetic field including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force (even when static via virtual particles). The invariant mass of the photon is zero; it always moves at the spe... |
if 2^-4 is 1/16, how come 2 / 2 / 2 / 2 isn't 1/16? | 2/2/2/2 isn't 2^-4, it is 2 * 2^-3 or 2^-2 = 1/4. 2^-4 would be written as 1/2/2/2/2 or 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2. | [
"In the second example we first add 3+1, giving 4; 4 is greater than 3, so we subtract 4 (giving 0) and carry −1 into the third column (the \"−4s column\"). Then we add 2+0 in the second column, giving 2. In the third column, we have 0+0+(−1), because of the carry; −1 is less than 0, so we add 4 (giving 3 as the re... |
why is it that when i look through someone else's reading glasses i have blurred vision, but if i look through them with a camera i can see clearly? | Just a guess but I'm pretty sure the camera has an autofocus. When you look at something a few inches away, then really far, your eyes adjust. It takes less than a second but your eyes are focusing until your brain decides that it is the proper focus.
Most cameras do the same. The computer knows its blurry so continues to try to fix it. If you pointed it at something close and then far away it would have to take a moment to adapt. I would bet of you took it away very quickly it would be blurry for a moment before it adapted to the new situation. | [
"Most speed reading courses claim that the peripheral vision can be used to read text. This has been suggested impossible because the text is blurred out through lack of visual resolution. At best the human brain can only \"guess\" at the content of text outside the macular region. There simply are not enough cone ... |
Is space a fluid? | No. But space is often filled with fluids such as gas and plasma. | [
"Astrophysical fluid dynamics is a modern branch of astronomy involving fluid mechanics which deals with the motion of fluids, like the gases which the stars are made up of or any fluid which is found in outer space. The subject covers the fundamentals of mechanics of fluids using various equations, ranging from th... |
the u.s. national debt. | It's important to know the difference between the Debt and the Deficit.
The Deficit is going down, which means that the Debt is rising more slowly than it used to. As long as there is any Deficit, the Debt will increase. | [
"The US has had public debt since its inception. Debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation led to the first yearly report on the amount of the debt ($75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791). Every president since Harry Truman has added to the national debt. The debt ceil... |
Have UV lamps, which promote Vitamin D, been used to treat seasonal depression? Could they? | Lightboxes for treating Seasonal Affective Disorder should actually filter out as much UV light as possible. [source](_URL_0_) | [
"The ultraviolet radiation in sunlight has both positive and negative health effects, as it is both a principal source of vitamin D and a mutagen. A dietary supplement can supply vitamin D without this mutagenic effect. Vitamin D has been suggested as having a wide range of positive health effects, which include st... |
Why is it so hard to build robots that have more fluid motion? | Engineer who does robotics here.
First of all there's very little to gain for "fluid" motion from a practical sense. Industrial robots are designed to lift a load, do a motion efficiently not necessarily look human-like when they do it.
second. Human motion is much more complex than it looks. Anyone who's been around a baby learning to walk you can see the brain and coordination isn't just there yet and they constantly fall over.
A human gait is not statically stable. That means if you were to stop all motion half way through your step you would fall over. Robots like Asimo are stable throughout their entire step that means if you were to cut power to asimo half way through it's step it would just remain frozen and not fall over.
This is because most robots are designed such that the center of gravity is always over their foot, eveyrthing is perfectly balanced so that the robot won't fall over. Humans on the other hand are not. We can't even sleep standing up because we would fall over.
So why don't we make robots that are dynamically unstable like humans? The answer is that it's much much much more difficult. Humans have a lot of feedback mechanisms like their inner ear, and nerve cells throught their feet and legs letting them know how much weight is on each foot and if they are falling over etc. If even one of these systems breaks the system generally doesn't work. For exmaple ear infections cause dizziness, and if your leg falls asleep or is numbed you can barely support yourself. Having a multiple feedback loop system is much more difficult to program. It's a field of active research, but the technology just isn't there yet. | [
"The tendency to build robots has been to minimize the degrees of freedom because that reduces the control problems. Recent improvements in computers has shifted the emphasis to more degrees of freedom, allowing robotic devices that seem more intelligent and more human in their motions. This also allows more direct... |
Is time infinitely divisible, or is it composed of a finite number of instants? | Not known. However, it's not unlikely combining relativity and quantum mechanics would involve quantized space-time. | [
"The continuous nature of time and its infinite divisibility was addressed by Aristotle in his \"Physics\", where he wrote on Zeno's paradoxes. The philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell was still seeking to define the exact nature of an instant thousands of years later.\n",
"A non-Archimedean time theory... |
why does hot (and humid) weather make some people become more prone to aggression and overall "cranky" mood? | Extreme weather is an example of stress on your body, which likely results in a sour temperament. This is similar to why you feel cranky when you are in pain. | [
"Pain and discomfort also increase aggression. Even the simple act of placing one's hands in hot water can cause an aggressive response. Hot temperatures have been implicated as a factor in a number of studies. One study completed in the midst of the civil rights movement found that riots were more likely on hotter... |
how a company like hbo can detect a torrent on my pc? | Because HBO (or some agency contracted by them) themselves have downloaded the torrent and ran it. They're writing down IPs, filenames, and applications, which you can garner from a torrent while it's downloading or uploading from/to other users.
HBO then sent a letter to the ISP saying "This, on this date, was committing piracy." HBO doesn't know it was you, specifically, who did it, but they know someone at that time was doing it from that connection. From that point, your ISP probably sees which client was using that ISP at any given moment, and sends the letter. | [
"Users find a torrent of interest on a torrent index site or by using a search engine built into the client, download it, and open it with a BitTorrent client. The client connects to the tracker(s) or seeds specified in the torrent file, from which it receives a list of seeds and peers currently transferring pieces... |
why do bugs drown while floating | Ill take a guess. Most insects don't breath with a set of lungs or the like but through their bodies. They drown because they are essentially porous? They fill up with water and Blub^Blub^Blub^blub | [
"These bugs give the illusion of sand floating around. They can consume large volumes of water at a rapid rate considering they are such small entities. They seem to be intelligent creatures and are passive and helpful unless provoked, in which case they can be extremely lethal. They fly around in \"swarms\" and wi... |
how is the inflation rate near zero when housing and rent have had substantial increases yearly? | Inflation is calculated by summing up the costs of certain expenses (food, water, etc) and dividing it by their costs from a year ago (or ten years ago, or whenever you want to compare)
There are different metrics used though, meaning that some may take into consideration some expenses (like housing or gasoline) while others do not look at these numbers. Odds are what you are looking at doesn't include these numbers, or just gives them a minimal weight.
Why don't we look at these numbers? Well for one the fluctuate a lot. Gasoline might cost $2.50 today but in 2 weeks it's down to $2.25, that's a drop of 10% which is way more volatile than the jar of peanut butter at your store. Why not a house? Well you buy a house once, maybe twice in your life time. It's not really the best metric to compare year to year to for inflation. That's why the housing market has its own numbers-like the 8% inflation you noticed | [
"Robert Shiller shows that the inflation adjusted U.S. home price increase has been about 45% during this period, an increase in valuations that is approximately consistent with most buyers financing their purchases using ARMs. In areas of the United States believed to have a housing bubble, price increases have fa... |
It's conventional wisdom today that richer families/countries have fewer children/lower population growth. Was this always the case? | Augustus (1st century BC to 1st century AD) felt compelled to take a number of actions to increase birthrates among the upper classes of Roman society. In the Res Gestae, a self-compiled list of his accomplishments, he boasts "In my fifth consulship [29 B.C.], I increased the number of patricians by order of the People and the Senate." The number of patrician families had diminished over the course of the republic and too many had died out; it was probably particularly important for him to increase the number of patrician families because he was also attempting to restore some of the elements of the traditional Roman religion, and many priesthoods (the flamen Dialis, the Vestal Virgins) required holder to be patricians.
He also passed a series of leges Iuliae concerning matrimony which encouraged marriage and the bearing of children among Roman citizens and the elite. Dio Cassius: "[Augustus] assessed heavier taxes on unmarried men and women without husbands, and by contrast offered awards for marriage and childbearing. And since there were more males than females among the nobility, he permitted anyone who wished (except for senators) to marry freedwomen, and decreed that children of such marriages be legitimate." Livy quotes from one of Augustus's speeches in favour of the leges Iuliae: "If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance; but since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure." | [
"This situation of wealthy countries usually having a lower fertility rate than poor countries is part of the fertility-income paradox, as the very high fertility countries are very poor, and it may seem counter-intuitive for families there to have so many children. The inverse relationship between income and ferti... |
Why isnt the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime? The cities attacked were civilian and the casualities civilian. This would.have been unthinkable if it happened today. | You may want to take a look at [this portion of the FAQ](_URL_0_) for potential answers to your question. | [
"These cities were largely untouched during the nightly bombing raids and the Army Air Forces agreed to leave them off the target list so accurate assessment of the damage caused by the atomic bombs could be made. Hiroshima was described as \"an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban... |
the difference between a 40$ haircut and a 400$ haircut. | I got a $300CAD haircut plus my roots done. I was at the hair dressers for 3 or 4 hours. The hairdresser cut my hair as if it was an art piece, it was a really cool experience to see someone so passionate about cutting hair. There was a point when he was doing the finishi g touches where he was pretty much cutting hairs on an individual level. He even had me stand up, and cut my hair while I was standing to make sure that everything would hang perfectly. He also styled it in the end using products that are probably really expensive to buy.
I got this done 2 months ago, and have since not been to the hair dressers once. As someome with platinum blonde hair this is pretty crazy, it is typical for someone to go every 5 weeks if they have bleach blonde hair. Mind you I am transitioning from full platium to streaks.
If you know anything about platinum blonde, it is pretty difficult to do your roots perfectly each time. Alot of people have "banding" of different tone.
A good haircut lasts a long time. Yea you spend a lot to get it done but it will look good for 3 - 6 months, depending on if you like it at a certain length or not.
I have hair just above my shoulders, longer hair does cost more, and depends on the cut. I have an assymetrical bob type cut.
You probably dont need to spend $400 for a good cut but $200 you should be able to get something very good if you just need cutting. | [
"At a time when barbers charged $1 to $2 for a haircut, Sebring charged $50 and more. His hair styling clients included Warren Beatty and Steve McQueen. He flew to Las Vegas every three weeks to cut the hair of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. At Kirk Douglas' request, Sebring did the hair styling for the movie \"... |
how quad core (multi core?) works. | It's like having more than one cook in a kitchen, instead of one really, really fast cook.
Well, the problem is actually a little more complex: for years and years, they were training cooks just to work faster, but realized that they were getting towards the top of how fast one cook could work, so they decided they'd start working on having multiple cooks at a time, even if they didn't work quite as fast.
It should be noted that you get the usual problems associated with this: one cook will have something another cook needs, and time is taken up handing it from one to the other; it doesn't make any particular dish get cooked faster unless you teach the cooks how to work on different parts of it at the same time; no particular task goes any faster, since it only takes one cook to make a steak; etc.
However, if you have many dishes that all need to get cooked at roughly the same time, having more than one cook is a big help. | [
"Each core has five integer units (four simple and one complex), two load-store units, one 128-bit AltiVec unit, 32+32 kB instruction and data L1 caches. Speeds range up to 2.5 GHz, and the core is designed to be highly configurable via the CoreNet fabric and meet the specific needs of embedded applications with fe... |
How can comets and asteroids that impact the Moon give a visual glow like fire if there's no oxygen or atmosphere on the Moon? | Highly energetic collision heats matter. Hot matter glows, no matter what its chemical makeup. | [
"Light from the sun hitting lunar dust causes it to become charged with the photoelectric effect. The charged dust then repels itself and lifts off the surface of the Moon by electrostatic levitation. This manifests itself almost like an \"atmosphere of dust\", visible as a thin haze and blurring of distant feature... |
why does continuously mixing cement, like in the back of a cement truck, stop it from hardening? | Cement will set at a fixed point in time based on its temperature and the amount of water in it. The goal is to make the cement slurry at the production facility and then time the trip of the delivery truck so that it shows up at the job site with the slurry in a useable state, can be poured, and then will begin to set on the schedule requested by the contractor (i.e. they don't want a liquified concrete puddle sitting around all afternoon).
The continuous mixing in the truck causes the water to evaporate at a predictable rate which means that the slurry will set at a predictable time. It also continues to mix all the aggregate and binder together ensuring that it doesn't separate by density during transport. | [
"Cement starts to set when mixed with water, which causes a series of hydration chemical reactions. The constituents slowly hydrate and the mineral hydrates solidify and harden. The interlocking of the hydrates gives cement its strength. Contrary to popular belief, hydraulic cement does not set by drying out — prop... |
what does it mean when a country 'nationalizes' something? | It basically means the government takes control of the company or their assets. It puts the operations of that company in government hands.
Since its that country's government doing it, it can't really be illegal (unless it violates their constitution). But in modern democratic countries they probably wouldn't simply seize a company's assets, they would buy them out for a reasonable price. | [
"\"What is a Nation?\" (\"Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?\") is an 1882 lecture by French historian Ernest Renan (1823–1892), known for the statements that a nation is \"a daily referendum\", and that nations are based as much on what the people jointly forget as on what they remember. It is frequently quoted or anthologi... |
what is "lbs of force" and is it the same as lbs? | Yes, that's true. Pounds are force units. However, we colloquially use pounds as a unit of mass, so the "of force" modifier is necessary to remind us that it's actually force. | [
"The gravitational foot-pound-second English unit of force is the pound-force (lbf), defined as the force exerted by gravity on a pound-mass in the standard gravitational field of . The pound-force provides an alternative unit of mass: one slug is the mass that will accelerate by one foot per second squared when ac... |
Why don't alkali metals such as lithium and potassium react violently with water found within the human body? | The reason alkali metals react so violently with water is that they have only one electron in the valence shell, and they desperately want to get rid of that electron so that the outmost electron shell is full. They do this by giving away that electron to one of the hydrogens in water.
In your body these elements are found in ionic form, i.e. they have already lost that one electron, and because of that they no longer react violently with water.
Think of the metals in your body in the same way as the sodium in sodium chloride (table salt). Dissolving the salt in water causes no violent reaction either because you already have the sodium as Na+ ions. | [
"Metal ions and metallic compounds are often used in medical treatments and diagnoses. Compounds containing metal ions can be used as medicine, such as lithium compounds and auranofin. Metal compounds and ions can also produce harmful effects on the body due to the toxicity of several types of metals. For example, ... |
why doesn't bill gates just invest his billions and donate the earnings rather than just donating his billions? | They do do this.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is split into two sections - one is the actual charity (a certain amount has to be given each year in order for the charity to maintain its charitable status), the other is a trust that makes investments with the sole aim of having the highest return on investment.
You can see the list of investments on the website or on [Wikipedia](_URL_0_). | [
"In 1999, his wealth briefly surpassed US$101 billion. Despite his wealth and extensive business travel, Gates usually flew coach in commercial aircraft until 1997, when he bought a private jet. Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the d... |
Is there historic evidence of child molestation within the Catholic church, or is it a recent phenomenon? | I don't think talking about child molestation as a phenomenon within the Catholic Church, as opposed to society as a whole is particularly accurate. The problem within the Church is/was more the fact that they covered it up, rather than a particularly high rate of child molesters serving as priests (for example, teachers are much more likely to molest children than a priest).
Speaking historically, it's also difficult to answer this because the notion of "child molestation" is a modern one. In the Greek world, pederasty between adult men and teenage boys (12-17ish) was not uncommon, but would certainly be considered child molestation today. The Church was always against this sort of thing, to varying degrees based on time and place (for example, suppression of homosexual relationships saw a significant uptick in the 12-14th centuries). We certainly do, however, have records of monks fooling around with novices. From the Desert Fathers:
> With wine and boys around, the monks have no need of the devil to tempt them.
Then again, we also have mentions of them having sex with the monastery's donkeys, the desert is a lonely place. | [
"Cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and members of religious orders in the 20th and 21st centuries have led to many allegations, investigations, trials and convictions as well as revelations about decades of attempts by Church officials to cover up reported incidents. The abused include mostly bo... |
what are the differences, plus strengths and weaknesses of different web browsers? explorer, chrome, duckduckgo, firefox, etc. | All those browsers are made by different companies with different visions/goals. This means some may be outdated, slow or gather all your data.
Do note that I am personally using Firefox for years now, so when describing major differences I will probably be biased/haven't used the browsers for too long and only know what I gathered from other users.
Internet Explorer is really old and not developed anymore. This means it is missing many new features websites nowadays will try to use and in return often not display everything correctly. It also is slow.
Chrome is made by Google. They got a lot of money - > Put a lot of money into developing it and currently chrome is the fastest browser*. Chrome also plans to prevent ad blocking in some ways in the near future (For example you will probably see Google ads, even with an ad blocker)
Firefox is the second fastest browser after Chrome and is open source, meaning everyone can look at their code. This helps finding bugs/security exploits or even malicious code. Also Firefox doesn't save all your browsing data to analyse you.
Duckduckgo is not a browser but an extension for different browsers AND a search engine replacing Google Search. Duckduckgo doesn't track your searches like Google Search does.
All in all - for the love of god, don't use Internet Explorer. Otherwise choose as you please.
*Found some number regarding speed in [this article](_URL_0_), they say that while chrome is faster, it's only marginal and usually not noticeable. | [
"Firefox is a web browser, and is Mozilla's flagship software product. It is available in both desktop and mobile versions. Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated web standards. , Firefox had approximately 10-11% of worldwide usage share of web browsers, m... |
why do gay people get so much (often violent) hate? | People generally fear what they do not understand. Most of the time it is just out and out ignorance.... and sometimes it is a fear that they may actually be gay or like the idea of trying it out. | [
"According to a Frontline article titled Inside the Mind of People Who Hate Gays, bias-related violence against homosexuals is believed to be widespread in the United States, with perpetrators typically described by victims as young men in groups who assault targets of convenience. Victims accounts suggest that ass... |
Has jury-nullification ever had an actual impact? | I haven't looked in depth into the specific famous cases of jury-nullification, but there were several instances where historians and law scholars have identified very influential trends of mass jury-nullification, when the juries of an area were likely to acquit defendants of a certain type of crime. My examples here are in no way a definitive list of these actions.
One of the most famous examples of this was reactions to the Fugitive Slave Acts in the North. Especially around New England, juries refused to either indict or convict those accused of illegally helping slaves escape to Canada. Under federal law, the accused slaves didn't get a jury trial, they were subject to very one sided hearings where they weren't allowed to speak on their own behalf and weren't required to have legal representation. Some states, most famously Vermont, extended rights to those accused of being an escaped slave so that they must be tried by jury trial. So there was jury nullification in trials for the mainly white abolitionists who were involved in helping hide or transport slaves to Canada and for those accused of being fugitive slaves themselves.
Obviously this was a wedge between North and South. The Fugitive Slave Laws were supposed to help prevent abolitionists from helping slaves escape, but you have both states nullifying the laws in various ways like switching the hearings for slaves into jury trials, and the instances of jury nullification. Maybe someone with more knowledge of the time period can more specifically state how jury nullification affected the politics of the era, but the reactions to the state laws nullifying the fugitive slave act are easier to see. South Carolina's proclamation for secession mentions the failures of federal and northern state governments to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act, not the jury nullification.
While I won't go into detail, I think mentioning vigilante violence of the 19th century probably should be paired with a discussion of the fugitive slave acts. The debate over nullification is pretty politically charged even today. If you want to talk about the good instances, you downplay the failure to convict lynchers and highlight the abolitionist efforts. Alternatively you could focus on jury nullification as the literal will of the mob by connecting it to juries failing to convict perpetrators of racial violence against minorities such as blacks and the Chinese.
"“Slave Law” versus “Lynch Law” in Boston: Benjamin Robbins Curtis, Theodore Parker, and the Fugitive Slave Crisis, 1850-1855" Dean Grodzins
*Lynching in the West : 1850-1935* Ken Gonzles Day
*Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans* Jean Pfaelzer | [
"In the United States, jury nullification first appeared just before the American Revolutionary War, when colonial juries frequently exercised their nullification power, principally in maritime cases and cases implicating free speech. Jury nullification became so common that many British prosecutors gave up trying ... |
how do nfl/american football coaches coach using their headsets? | One player on offense (always the QB) and one player on the defense has a headset. When there are 15 seconds left in the clock to snap the ball, or when the ball is snapped, the headset is turned off, so they don't work in the middle of plays, only between plays.
And the coach is talking to other coaching staff as well. | [
"Coach’s Eye is a mobile app for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and many Android devices that enables users to capture, analyze and share video. It is designed with the intent that coaches and parents can record athletes, analyze the playback and share it with others. It enables an instructor to shoot video of an at... |
Are all mountains on Mars volcanic? | No. Aeolis Mons (aka Mount Sharp), the mountain Curiosity is exploring, is made of sedimentary rock and seems to have formed by deposition and erosion. There are also some mountains around the Hellas basin that were probably formed by crustal uplift caused by the impact.
Valles Marineris is thought to be a rift valley, but Mars does not appear to have organised tectonic plates like Earth. Studies of magnetism in Mars's rocks have not shown the same clear patterns that Earth's oceanic spreading ridges, an essential feature of plate tectonics, produce. (Though Mars no longer has a planetary magnetic field, it did in the past). | [
"In the southern hemisphere, particularly around the Hellas impact basin, are several flat-lying volcanic structures called highland paterae These volcanoes are some of the oldest identifiable volcanic edifices on Mars. They are characterized by having extremely low profiles with highly eroded ridges and channels t... |
why is it so easy to notice bad acting? what are good actors doing that makes them seem more natural? is there a scientific explanation for how we tell the difference? | Humans are social animals. If you want to have a cushy life in the group, you have to pick up on lots of little cues. Body language, tone of voice, facial expression, every little detail is important and we are trained to pick up on discrepencies. A good actor has to fool you on all of these fronts. A bad actor might only fuck up on one. His smile dloesnt reach his eyes. His voice doesnt sound as angry as his face looks. His face is scared but his body language says hes calm. He fucks a line or his voice cracks. Theres a million ways for his act to be off in just a tiny way, but you pick up on it because social cues are important.
Edit: to address ops additional clarification/questions.
training to be a good actor: method acting is the big one going around, but in truth a lot of great actors use it, and a lot of great ones dont. Everyones different, some things work better for some people than others, but essentially its a feedback system: an actor in training tries something, gets feedback and fixes it based on the feedback. Even the really good actors do this a lot. a movie isnt just a bunch of scenes stitched together, theres outtakes and bloopers and redos galore, though there are scenes done in one take. "Try it again with FEEELING!".
As for the brain section I imagine its a bit complicated there, primarily involved with language processing and emotional processing, but I dont know enough to pinpoint any particular areas beyond conjecture that it would be heavily biased towards the "limbic brain" which processes emotional decisions.
I dont have any idea about the director bit except to say that maybe with a bad director the actors care less about the acting, or are more stressed or riled up emotionally and it bleeds into the performance.
On detecting it with a computer, I can say pretty definitively that we cant currently detect any but the worst examples by voice. We cant even tell when people are lying definitively without reading scans directly from their brain. But we're getting there. as technology advances im sure we'll develop software that can analyse everything we as humans do, (body language, facial cues, etc.) Its just not there yet.
| [
"These scenes are always the toughest of any scenes to do... People get into acting not to be exhibitionists, necessarily. They get into it because they love acting. And then you're basically trying to convince them that this part of the story is essential... Basically my philosophy of how to do these scenes is to ... |
if america wanted to impeach barack obama, could they do it now? how would that practically happen? | The House would have to vote to impeach and then the Senate would act as the Jury.
So, you would have to convince your elected representatives. This will not happen because:
1) POTUS has not committed an impeachable offense
2) Even if he did, the Democrats control the Senate
3) Even if they didn't, it takes a 2/3 majority to convict
| [
"In August 2011, Republican Congressman Michael C. Burgess of Texas agreed with a rally audience member that the impeachment of Barack Obama \"needs to happen\" in order to prevent Obama from \"pushing his agenda\". Burgess did not mention any grounds for impeachment.\n",
"During Barack Obama's tenure as Presiden... |
what causes loss of time-place awareness after a sudden wakeup? | I believe it's to do with how deep you are into your sleep. Your brain has entered a stage, and if woken up suddenly, it is pulled out of that stage quickly, which leads to confusion. | [
"Another study examined the activation patterns of 5 people who woke up from microsleeps in a simulated driving experiment. It was found that upon awakening the visual area, frontal cortex, limbic lobe were activated (in the intense activation phase) and the frontal cortex, temporal cortex, primary motor area, and ... |
Does cosmic radiation have a malignant effect on people outside of Earth's Magnetic Field? | The vast majority of astronauts who have gone through or past the van Allen belts (typically on the way to the moon) have subsequently developed cataracts. The exposure was minimized with shielding and route planning, but wasn't totally avoidable. | [
"Similarly, cosmic rays cause higher background exposure in astronauts than in humans on the surface of Earth. Astronauts in low orbits, such as in the International Space Station or the Space Shuttle, are partially shielded by the magnetic field of the Earth, but also suffer from the Van Allen radiation belt which... |
how did it happen that the honey bee became critical to our (north american) habitat, when it isn't native to here. | It's not critical to the north American habitat. It's critical for our large crops that are mostly from europe/Asia and need a swarm bee to polinate them | [
"Honey bees, which have traditionally been emphasized as important crop pollinators in Canada, did not exist in North America before they were introduced there by humans. In Western countries including Canada, honey bees have recently become prone to colony collapse disorder, which threatens the production of many ... |
How would one say that cathedrals represent the power held by the church in medieval Europe? | I would add to your list the emotional power of cathedrals to awe and impress supplicants who came from very far to worship in them and likely never saw a single other building that could remotely compete with the scale of a cathedral's magnificence. | [
"The cathedrals fall into three distinct groups, depending on their earlier organisational structure. Firstly, there are those that, during the Medieval period as now, were governed by a body of secular clergy or chapter, presided over by a dean. These cathedrals are Chichester, Exeter, Hereford, Lichfield, Lincoln... |
What are constants like Planck's constant? Is there a reason for these seemingly arbitrary numbers to be necessary components of an equation? | Physical constants in SI units tend to be "messy" in that they have many digits or very large/small orders of magnitude because they are expressed in "human-sized" units, e.g. the meter, second, kilogram, etc.
For effects that are very strong or weak compared to human scales, this causes the relevant physical constants to be very large/small. Additionally, physical constants are typically known to very high precision, so many decimal places are required to express them.
For some types of physics in which human-sized units are decidedly the wrong choice, people do things like set hbar = 1, which makes the numbers and equations look nicer. | [
"The Planck constant is one of the smallest constants used in physics. This reflects the fact that on a scale adapted to humans, where energies are typically of the order of kilojoules and times are typically of the order of seconds or minutes, the Planck constant (the quantum of action) is very small. One can rega... |
will we ever develop a space telescope that will resolve exoplanets with satellite fidelity? | problem is that you need light. planets don't emit light. they only weakly reflect light.
in abscence of light, you can compensate by making the subject stay still and you can take a long exposure shot.
problem is..planets don't stay still either. | [
"Telescope for Habitable Exoplanets and Interstellar/Intergalactic Astronomy (THEIA) is a NASA-proposed 4-metre optical/ultraviolet space telescope that would succeed the Hubble Space Telescope and complement the infrared-James Webb Space Telescope. THEIA would use a 40-metre occulter to block starlight so as to di... |
What sort of sports would be played or watched by the Japanese during the Edo period? | Sorry it has taken me so long to respond to this great question. It has been a busy week of teaching.
The first and most obvious response is sumo wrestling. During the Edo Period (1603-1868), samurai who either had lost their official positions serving a particular lord or who needed additional work and income participated in wrestling matches that gradually become more professionalized. What had started as a ritual performance to please the gods at Shinto shrines and Buddhist temple complexes became an organized sport where the samurai class, as well as wealthy urban commoners, could celebrate martial competition in an otherwise largely peaceful society.
Another semi-public performance that could be considered a sport was archery, particularly mounted archery. Yabusame, for example, which can still be seen at Shinto shrines in Japan today, involved a mounted archer riding down a track and shooting at three stationary targets along the way. Kasagake, by contrast, involved contestants navigating a course in which targets had been placed in various locations and shooting them under various constraints. The last form of mounted archery, inuōmono, is never seen in modern Japan for obvious reasons. It involved mounted archers shooting at dogs that had been released in a ringed pen or in a large rectangular enclosure. Although blunted arrows were used, even in the Edo Period there was criticism of what was obviously a cruel sport from the dog's point of view.
Members of the imperial court were experts in a ritual sport called kemari, a kind of performative kickball that people sometimes compare to hackey-sack. Some aristocratic families had been practicing kemari for centuries and passed down secret texts with family traditions for mastering the game. In the medieval period many elite warriors studied kemari under aristocratic tutors, but I haven't seen references to actual public performances under Tokugawa rule. It is mentioned in Edo-period novels and appears in some paintings, though, so clearly there was a widespread awareness of the sport. | [
"In the Edo period, sports became a popular way to spend time. The only problem was that they were often accompanied by gambling. A notice to punish playing and betting on sumo without authorization was repeatedly posted to little effect. Kyūdō was encouraged by \"shōguns\" and \"daimyōs\" as a pastime, and contest... |
Most Technologically Advanced Civilization in 1000BCE | I'm quite surprised that you didn't consider Zhou Dynasty China. Hydraulic engineering for farmland, construction of vast, fortified cities, advanced metalworking (far in advance of European artifice), the flowering of pre-Confucian philosophy...
Near Eastern and European civilizations of the time pale in comparison. | [
"Discovered long after the contemporary civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization or Harappan civilization (c. 2400–1900 BCE) is now recognized as extraordinally advanced, comparable in many ways with those cultures.\n",
"Kryptonian civilization's reported level of technological advanc... |
what are the mid-term elections and who won? | > Every state is represented by two Senators, but by different numbers of Representatives based on their population. The Senate gives small states equal representation, because the Senate is about representing the states. The House is about representing the people directly.
& #x200B;
Long story short, Democrats took back the majority in the House while the Republicans got a higher majority in the Senate. With as divided as our politics are currently, I don't see anything getting done for the next 2 years. | [
"In a given election, after the first and second regions have held primaries, the remaining two regions can be combined to hold a final primary. This would shorten the primary schedule, and leave no fourth primary likely scheduled after the nominees have been selected.\n",
"In the May primary, the major political... |
Is it true that when you smile, your body actually releases serotonin/endorphins? Or is it just a marketing hoax? | I've been checking this post for the last 7 hours refreshing now and then, and I'm sad that no one has replied here yet, I'm really interested in this as well. | [
"Serotonin functions as a neurotransmitter in the nervous systems of most animals. For example, in the roundworm \"Caenorhabditis elegans\", which feeds on bacteria, serotonin is released as a signal in response to positive events, such as finding a new source of food or in male animals finding a female with which ... |
Last Of The Mohicans, how accurate is that movie? | The siege of Fort William Henry and subsequent massacre are fairly accurate. The other episodes involving Natty Bumppo aka Deerslayer aka Hawkeye are, of course, invented.
Wikipedia offers [a tidy summary of the movie's historical background](_URL_0_).
| [
"Upon the twentieth anniversary of \"Pocahontas\", \"The A.V. Club\" Caroline Siede said that the film \"remains probably the most high profile story of a Native American in pop culture.\" Tom Brook of the BBC said that the character's portrayal was impacted by how \"[t]he rights of Native Americans were strengthen... |
why are teachers exempt from the overtime laws/changes? | (It's been a while, so things may have changed, but...)
Teachers aren't paid by the hour. It's as simple as that.
The way it was when I knew the way it was, was: Each school district has a pay scale, like a matrix, that tells what the base annual salary is for a teacher with X years experience and Y credits. Add to that a fixed fee for coaching, or mentoring the math club, or whatever. Teacher signs a contract to be paid Annual Amount for Defined Task.
Then: ask the teacher whether s/he wants to be paid that annual amount in 9, 10, or 12 equal portions.
Is it still that way? I don't know.
| [
"An overtime ban is a form of industrial action where employees limit their working time to the hours specified in their contracts, refusing to work any overtime. Overtime bans are less disruptive than strike action, and since there is no breach of contract by the employees there is less chance of disciplinary acti... |
How long could you live on life support machines? | No we can't. We can replace the heart, the lungs and the kidneys more or less sufficiently for quite some time, but these systems are not perfect, and sooner or later you'd die anyway. Moreover it is not possible to replace liver function from the outside, at least not fully. So when the liver fails and you don't get a transplant, you're toast. | [
"The second patient, Tom Christerson, who was given less than a 20 percent chance of surviving 30 days at the time of his surgery, lived for 512 days after receiving the AbioCor, dying on February 7, 2003 due to the wearing out of an internal membrane of the AbioCor. An additional 12 patients had the device implant... |
In 14th and 15th century continental Europe, what were the actual practical differences between the "ranks" of landed Nobility, such as Baron, Count, and Duke, etc? | This is a rather large question, even when limited to one of the countries you mentioned. I'll try to give a brief overview of the ranking of the nobility in the HRE, as that's my area of expertise.
In theory, from 13th century a simple hierarchical system of the various titles existed within the Empire. In practice, things were more complicated, as they often are when dealing with the HRE.
A simplified form of the hierarchy of titles went: Duke (Herzog), Marquis (Markgraf), Count Palatine (Pfalzgraf), Landgrave (Landgraf), Burgrave (Burggraf), Count (Graf), Baron (Freiherr), Lord (Herr) and finally Knight (Ritter). Seven princes within the Empire held the special title of Elector, which designated their function, but were never an independent noble title. The electorates were connected with specific territories. Until 1648 there were seven Electors: The archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, the Margraviate of Brandenburg and the Count-Palatinate of the Rhine.
Various dukes and counts also claimed highly specific titles for themselves, to gain prestige and prominence. The most famous are of course the Archdukes of Austria, who reinvented the title in the 14th century through the forgery of the Privilegius Maius, which claimed that the title of Archduke dated back to ancient times. The Austrians claimed the title put them on equal footing with the Electors. In Italy, the Medici Dukes of Florance were granted the title of Grand Dukes by the Pope in 1569. Along the Rhine, both the Wildgrafen and the Rheingraven claimed specific comital titles, but those were deemed to be on the same level as normal counts.
The case of the four secular Electors is a good illustration of how the hierarchy of titles differed from both ceremonial reality and actual power differences. Based on the hierarchy, you would rank the Electors as follows: Bohemia (King), Saxony (Duke), Brandenburg (Margrave) and Palatinate (Pfalzgraf). Ceremonially they were ranked: Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg, Bohemia (!). The Count-Palatine held the highest ranking office of Arch-Steward and was the designated administrator of the southern and central (Franconian, Bavarian, Swabian and Rhenish) areas of the Empire in case of the absence of an Emperor. The Duke of Saxony held the same rights in the northern Saxon regions. Even though he was by far they wealthiest and most powerful of the electors, the king of Bohemia was seen as somewhat of a special case: as the ruler of a Slavic country, he was seen as not completely belonging to the German Empire. Following the Hussite Wars (early 15th century), Bohemia was even excluded from voting in Imperial Elections!
While the territories belong to the counts Palatine may seem small, they were quite rich from levying tolls on the trade along the Rhine and the Neckar rivers. The truly odd one within the college of Electors was the Duke of Saxony (until 1423). The actual duchy of Saxony that was tied to the Electorate compromised only a small area around Wittenberg in today's federal state of Saxony-Anhalt. It was not only small, but rather poor as well. The only reason the Dukes held one of the highest offices in the Empire was the prestige associated with the enormous Duchy of Saxony that had existed before 1180, when Emperor Frederick Barbarossa broke up the Duchy that was held by his rival, Duke Henry the Lion. In 1423, Emperor Sigismund granted the small duchy of Saxony(-Wittenberg) to the Margraves of Meissen, who owned extensive lands to the the north of Bohemia, that held huge silver deposits. Only after 1423 would the actual power of the Saxon Dukes match their prestige.
Leaving the details concerning the Electors aside, the main difference that existed between the nobles houses of the HRE was their status, or lack thereof, as *Princes* (Fürsten). Princes were the highest class of nobility and derived their status from holding fiefs directly from the emperor. Their status was demonstrated by their right to receive investiture directly from the emperor. All Dukes and Margraves were designated as princes, and those holding lesser titles like Landgrave or Burgrave could be recognized as princes as well. The counts of Anhalt were the only counts with the rank of princes. Other counts could rise to become princes, when they were raised up to become Dukes by the emperor, like Württemberg, Guelders or Luxembourg. Sometimes, like in the case of Henneberg, counts were raised without receiving a ducal title, thus becoming princely counts (Gefürstete grafen).
When the rule of the Empire was formalized during the reign of Maximilian I, princes received the right to vote in person, while counts only had collective votes during Imperial assemblies. Other than that, princes saw themselves as clearly superior and tried to marry only within their group. Elector Philip I of the Palatinate refused to marry the heiress of the County of Katzenelbogen on account of her inferior status, even though he would have expanded his holdings considerably. The second Wife of William of Orange, Anna of Saxony, saw herself as superior to her husband, a mere count of Nassau, even though he was one of the richest nobles (in theory, since king Philip of Spain has confiscated most of his land due to his open revolt against the crown) in the Netherlands.
All in all the hierarchy of titles mattered with dealing with matters of precedence during dinners and ceremonies, but status as an Imperial Prince (or not) was what mattered most. Actual power and wealth was not dependent upon titles, although the Emperor could correct matters by elevating counts to dukes.
Peter H Wilson, *The Holy Roman Empire* (2016) | [
"Traditional rank amongst European royalty, peers, and nobility is rooted in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Although they vary over time and among geographic regions (for example, one region's prince might be equal to another's grand duke), the following is a reasonably comprehensive list that provides informa... |
are new born childs genetically predispositioned with their parents behaviors/abilities? | The general answer is yes, genes inherited from the child's parents will predispose that child to certain traits and abilities. This does not mean their genes absolutely determine what they'll be capable of achieving or performing. Even identical twins with the same genes from their parents will differ in terms of what they can do and what personalities they'll have, because environmental influences are important as well. Depression, for example, is estimated to be about half determined by genes and half determined by environment, at least according to [these Stanford Medicine doctors](_URL_0_). In the end, the debate about what makes the most difference - genes or the environment - continues on, with some traits and abilities being highly determined by genes and others traits not so much. | [
"A study found that although parents did rate their adoptive children higher in negative traits and behaviors like arrogance and stealing, they scored both adopted and biological children similarly when it came to positive traits like conscientiousness and persistence. A 2004 study found that after gaining a child ... |
What were some great literary/artistic achievements of precolonial black Africa? | Without a doubt, the rock art of the San in Southern Africa has to be considered a genuine artistic achievement by pre-colonial Africans. /u/tlacomixle would be the person to go to regarding these things more intricately but from what I know from my own life in Africa, these paintings are both incredibly numerous and artistically varied. The pictographs have been found mostly in the rocky areas of land south of the Zambezi, but isolated cases have been discovered in parts of central Africa as well. About 15,000 sites have been identified as belonging to various groups of San. These cover a period of some 3,000 years, including right up to the present day. Some in the Drakensberg area even record San being hunted by men on horseback with guns, possibly the story of punitive "commandoes" carried out by Boer settlers on the violent frontier of the Cape Colony in South Africa.
All the various examples of San paintings are culturally and historically significant, and the recognition of the San rock art's importance has only increased in recent years. According to J.D. Lewis-Williams, the central image in the South African coat of arms derives from a San rock painting in the Eastern Cape. Other historians have called the San rock paintings and engraving the longest enduring tradition of art-making known to continue today.
Although the style of art appears relatively simple by modern standards, the detail in many of these paintings and engravings is simply incredible. Unlike the paintings made by other Bantu-speaking groups in Africa (who used their fingers to paint), the San used brushes made from small reeds and animal hair or feathers. This gave their paintings a delicacy which few other forms of art in pre-colonial Africa could achieve.
I was fortunate enough to see first hand examples in two parts of rural Zimbabwe which were dated back some 800 years and included twenty different species of animal, as well as humans in a variety of activities including hunting, herding animals, and eating. The animals are drawn to a physiological accuracy which would be impressive even for somebody to draw today. The two examples I saw were only a hundred miles apart and yet there were nuances and stylistic differences which visibly demonstrated how incredible these artists were and how much their art was individualised. [Here are the two examples I saw.](_URL_0_) These photos are only small sections of paintings covering entire walls of caves and covered rocky outcrops. In the case of the latter, it is located half-way up a granite kopje, some hundred feet above the ground, accessible only by scrambling up a steep slope and squeezing through a narrow gap. That the San people took the time to bring charcoal, ochre, animal blood, plant extracts and other pigments to these places in order to record these images is significant. Unlike other forms of rock art in Africa, these were often not done for any practical purpose either. They were purely expressions of artistic abilities or to record cultural practices.
I hope this helps answer your question as one example of the artistic achievements of pre-colonial Africans. There are many books, blogs, and websites out there which talk more in depth about the history and provide more detailed analysis of the rock art itself. Any questions, please ask and I shall do my best to answer. | [
"The African works best known in the West from the periods of colonization and the slave trade are primarily slave narratives, such as Olaudah Equiano's \"The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano\" (1789).\n",
"Numerous examples of pre-colonial African literature span the continent, from scripts d... |
why does parts of the world call petrol; gasoline? | Why do some parts of the world call gasoline petrol? | [
"In countries where petroleum spirits is called \"petrol\" rather than \"gasoline\", it is common for autogas to be simply referred to as \"gas\". This can be confusing for people from countries where petrol is called \"gasoline\", as they often use \"gas\" as an abbreviation of gasoline.\n",
"The use of the word... |
How are the alternating currents generated by different power stations synchronised before being fed into the grid? | Nuclear power plant operator here.
The power of one generator is very little compared to the grid. The grid will use this overwhelming force to sync up the generator when connected no matter what, just as it does with any synchronous engine ~~e.g. your vacuum cleaner~~. In fact, when you cut steam to a generator's turbine while still connected to the grid the generator will turn into a motor.
Problem is turbines are really heavy and already spinning at the time of turning the switch on so what you want is to minimize the "shock" of synching (the grid rarely cares, but the tubine is 200 tonnes at 3000 RPM).
You do this by coming as close to the grid frequency at possible. The synchrotact (our name for synchroscope) gives the phase difference between the two points so it spins when not the same frequency. Then, when it spins really slow, you (or the automatic) turn the switch on as close to the top position as possible.
Edit: For off-this-topic questions, there is now an [AMA](_URL_0_) as requested. | [
"Typically both ends share the current generation with one end providing a positive voltage and the other a negative voltage. A virtual ground point exists roughly halfway along the cable under normal operation. The amplifiers or repeaters derive their power from the potential difference drop across them.\n",
"Ha... |
Some Ming Emperor were tolerant and supportive of Islam. How did they reconcile this with the Mandate of Heaven? | For some clarification, why do you think tolerance of Islam wouldn't be compatible with the Mandate of Heaven? The Mandate of Heaven was, by and large, a tool for establishing legitimacy for rulers. The Tang and Song were also tolerant of Islam (although the Tang did have some real difficulties with Buddhism). I'm a bit confused as to why you think they are incompatible? | [
"Ming Taizu's tolerant disposition for Muslims and allowing them to practice their religion led to Arab missionaries continually coming to China during the Ming dynasty, prominent ones included Mahamode and Zhanmaluding (Muhammad and Jamal Ul-din respectively).\n",
"During the following Ming dynasty, Muslims cont... |
how does lower taxes result in higher revenues and vice versa. | Well, this isn't universally accepted but here's the idea. The government takes a percentage of the money that people make. If they lower how the percentage they are taking then people will have more money to spend, which will help the business that they buy stuff from, which allows them to hire more people and pay higher wages. This all adds up to people making more money than they originally did with higher taxes. So, even though the government is taking less percent of everyone's pay, the overall economy is larger and so it more than makes up for it.
It's like taking a smaller piece of a bigger pie. | [
"The \"tax rate effect\" is based on the fact that as long as the profit of a (supposed) subsidiary is not distributed to the domestic (corporate or individual) shareholder, the profit is not taxed in the shareholder's country. If the foreign tax rate is lower than the domestic one, profits can thus be retained in ... |
What did French people eat during the Nazi Occupation? | \[If you are in a rush and /or don't want to read everything, I always tend to try to make a conclusion section in my answers to have the mains points (without the stories and explanation though), so if you want a quick answer, go see that section, otherwise enjoy the reading :) \]
& #x200B;
Hello there, I'm finally taking time to answer that question that I saved a long time ago.First of all two disclaimers :
\- I'm French and my answer and sources will be focused and from French perspectives, I can't answer you for the other occupied part of the world (due to a lack of knowledge about them). My primary source will be what my grand-parents told me about the war (I really need to share with Reddit the recorded story my grandma made for us), the different stories/witnesses I heard about from a French radio show (Hondelatte Raconte) and the French website [Mémoire de Guerre](_URL_1_).
\- Second disclaimer is about the impact of the War itself : while the war was awful, it's important to remember that the stories told and more popular are usually extreme. Most of the country weren't on or next to the front, so the war was more like a far away scary shadow than an actual doom on their doorstep.
& #x200B;
**Context**
The main thing is that each one of the occupied people were affected by the war in different ways. If you were living in a city you would suffer way more food problems than if you were in a rural area. It's important to note that the Rural Exod in France happened only after 1945, so during the war most of the population was still in rural areas.The impact of the war on the food is not the same throughout time, and change according the time and the zones occupied (France was occupied in the North directly by the Nazis while the South was under a French puppet State whom collaborated with the Nazis : France de Vichy/Vichy France.The war itself took away a huge portion of the labor force, especially during those times were women couldn't work (the popularization and use of women in the labor force really happened in France because of the war), thus you would end up with a huge drop in productivity in the whole country. With men on the front or in prison, the production of food but also of everything else would drop. Another thing is that most of the production was focused on the "Effort de Guerre" (War Effort), so mostly focused on producing goods for the war (ammunition, tanks, weapons...).The occupation had different forms, given the numbers of cities and villages, the Nazi couldn't physically occupy everything in an efficient way, so some villages would rarely see Nazi in their street (but they would always show up here and there for different reasons), and they would rely a lot on local forces (most of the time French but always collaborative to the Nazi). So, when you had Nazis or extra people in town to oversee, occupy, those people would be another burden on a food side, they would have privileges on the food and were given (by obligation, not by choice and happiness) food and other goods from the inhabitants and factories.Another factor is the direct effect of the War : with the War the country wouldn't be supplied by its colonies or by trade, thus a huge drop in food importations.
**The food during the War**
The government quickly set up a system of Rations where people were given tickets at the beginning of the month by the authority to allow them to trade them for food and goods. Those rations were subject to change and did change throughout the occupation.The system also set up a categorization of the population, according your age and situation :
* E (kids under 3)
* J1 (3 to 6)
* J2 (6 to 13)
* J3 (13 to 21)
* A (21 to 70)
* V (seniors above 70 years old)
* Travailleur de Force (Labor Worker, people whom had a manual work)
* Women who breastfeed
The website mentioned earlier provides an example to visualize the rations and its evolution ; an adult (A category) in 1938 consume in average 3.4Kg (7.5lbs)/month while in May 1941 he had the right to get only 350g (12.35oz)/month and in 1943 260g (9oz)/month.That's a point that my grandma mentioned a lot : meat was the most difficult food to find and also to keep. She told me that her mum gave her a chicken that they had (she was in a small village) to take to the butcher to cook/roast it. The butcher was one of the only one in the village who had the possibility to cook food for a long time, since he had fat (butter and other kind of fat were very rare and usually taken away by the authorities). Anyway, it took him a whole day to cook it and when my grandma went to get it back, the chicken was missing some pieces and most of all, the juice was mostly gone. They made that chicken last for a week (for a household of 6 people at that time).Another factor who tend to forget that has a direct impact on the food is the lack of gas and coal due to embargo and drop in productivity : with no gas, it was harder to go further to get food, and without coal it was very very hard to heat houses and even cook. Because meat was difficult to get, most people ate vegetables and people tried to replace the goods that were the most difficult to find (meat, fat, sugar, coffee, milk, bread, cheese...). Artichoke and rutabaga became popular to eat, sugar is replaced if possible by saccharin, coffee by chicory/succory.
**Effects of the shortage**
The first effect of the shortage is the huge lines/queues front of the shops that had some food/goods to exchange for rations tickets. A funny thing (on a psychological stand point) is that people would know if food was available by the length of the queues and avoid the stores with no people (it sounds counterproductive to me, but I also understand the idea behind it).Most people who had food (butchers, bakers, store owners) would hide their goods to protect and/or keep them (a butcher got caught hiding a pig in his bed in 1942 according to a news paper in East France).A lot of people in the city would try to go in rural areas to find food, and a huge network emerged during the occupation. People started to trade a lot, for everything! Communities (villages, neighborhood) would help each other as much as they could, they knew that together they could survive better rather than alone (wink wink to the theory in economy of the economies of scales, probably The Hand doing its job, right Adam Smith?). My grandma told me the story of that neighbor that got out just in time of her house (in PJ's) during a bombing, she lost everything, all she had was her PJ's ; the whole neighborhood took care of her even if they all were suffering from the lack of _URL_0_ the cities, people without friends or families in rural areas were suffering the most, and balconies, caves and other rooms turned into garden and livestock areas (especially the caves, good place to hide your chickens, rabbits and pigs from the Nazi, for a short time at least).Of course, as any other time of trouble the Black Market became a huge and real thing that the authorities tried to fight. People were asked to denunciate anybody who practiced it, propaganda was put in place implying that "the black market is killing the war effort and would lead to a worst situation."
**In conclusion**
People in France would eat what they could get, in one hand from their rations tickets in stores, and on another hand what they could cultivate, raise and/or trade (il)legally. Food was indeed hard to get by, and was without doubt the biggest impact for a lot of people of the war (they didn't see or hear the war, especially with a deliberate lack of communication). They would replace what they could with other products to get as close as possible as they could. Meat, bread, wine, milk (and its products like cheese), fat and sugar were the rarest of the food and highly valued,
I hope I managed to answer your question, and again that's only a view point on France, I can't talk for Belgium, the Netherlands and other countries. The Benelux would have been in a better situation in my opinion given their germanic culture (Hitler considered them better than the Latins), and I would believe that Poland would have been in a worst situation, especially the Warsaw Ghetto.And as a last side note about my grandma (one of my big source ;) ) is that during the war she was in Marseille (South) for a first time before moving to a small village more inland and less likely to be bombed by the Nazi or the Americans. | [
"Throughout the occupation, it was German policy to plunder France and food shortages were always a major problem as the majority of food from the French countryside went to Germany. Sartre wrote about the \"languid existence\" of the Parisians as people waited obsessively for the one weekly arrival of trucks bring... |
How does the pH of one's mouth effect cavity creation/prevention? Or just mouth health in general? | 7 hours, no replies. Here are a few comments, based on what I know:
Most oral decay in humans is due to bacteria (Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacilli). Both are quite capable of converting sugars- mainly the big three (fructose, glucose, and sucrose)- into lactic acid. Doing so right at the surface of the tooth allows a couple of things to happen.
First off, as bacterial colonies, they stick right at the surface. Secondly, while living in that area, they can generate lots of lactic acid, right at that surface; as a result, regardless of the oral pH, they can generate a sufficiently low pH to produce caries. "Bathing" the teeth in sweet liquids (usually soda) helps, of course.
Examination of archaeological specimens shows that caries were scarce in populations that consumed a lot of meat; the advent of agriculture, bringing with it rich quantities of starch and sugars, also brought with it dental caries. This is documented by both Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and Dr. Weston Price. Carbohydrates are "sticky," and the surface of teeth is an ideal resting place for them; conversely, fats prevent adsorption of these compounds, and populations that consumed copious quantities of fat (the Inupiat and Inuit, the Maasai, Pacific Islanders and the Maori, Aboriginies, the Plains Indians, traditional Icelanders) all had spectacular teeth up until the introduction of "Western" foods containing starch and sugar (white flour, canned fruits, jellies and jams). In some cases, this happened in *months,* such as with the Inuit ("Eskimos") during construction of the Distant Early Warning Line.
As for why other animals don't need to brush their teeth:
Canines (like dogs) and big cats (which are obligate carnivores) don't consume carbohydrates in the wild, so caries are unlikely. Plaque buildup is reduced because they chew and consume bones, etc. that remove the plaque. One of my dentist buddies informs me that just the crunching action- the vibration- can loosen and remove calculus as well.
Other critters tend not to eat sweet foods all the time. Sure, there are lots of sweet foods out there, but almost all of these are of hybrid origin; wild Peruvian potatoes (the size of a thumb) in comparison to 1+ pound goliath hybrids today. Oranges and other sweet citrus: hybrids where their diminutive wild equivalents are so much smaller. Fruits (apples) and berries: much larger today (hybrids, selective breeding, polyploids) than they were even a century ago. Ditto with all modern grains: wheat, corn, rice, etc.- all vastly larger than their wild equivalents, thanks to selective breeding, and being of polyploid origin. A quick stroll through the supermarket quickly makes us forget that our ancestors didn't have things like white flour, sacks of sugar and rice, oranges the size of softballs, apples that are more sweet than starch (until the advent of abolition, apples were used for making alcohol in America, and for feeding to animals- not for eating), and so forth.
As for your last question- I already addressed the pH thing, but even if that could be fixed, there would be the matter of bacteria growing down below the gumline, in that anaerobic environment. Hence the flossing. So, you'd still need to do that.
Brushing is also imperative. Try a little experiment sometime; rinse with Listerine, no brushing. See how long that works until your mouth feels disgusting. Biofilms, man. | [
"Studies showed that the net reduction of oral bacteria was associated with a decrease in both incidence of aspiration pneumonia as well as mortality from aspiration pneumonia. One broad method of decreasing the number of bacteria in the mouth involves the use of antimicrobials, ranging from topical antibiotics to ... |
The appeal of Christianity in the 3rd century | If no one else answers your question, and you're still curious, I strongly recommend the book *The Rise of Christianity* by Rodney Stark. I think it does a good job explaining a lot of the growth of the Christian Church. He gets into a lot of the different appeals, but one place that really stands out is its appeal for women. It gave women more rights and power than most Roman institutions. Converted women oft brough their husbands, or at least their children, into the Church. Constantine the Great's mother, for example, was definitely a Christian, and Eusebius, in his official biography of Constantine, argues that Constantine's father was a secret Christian (he was relatively tolerant to Christians in the areas under his control) but we have no outside evidence of this. Christians also provided the social services you read about in the Beautifudes (caring for the sick, visiting people in prison, feeding the hungry, etc) which made them appeal to the poor (as well as people for whom caring for the poor was important--I belive frequently rich women). Further, they formed a clear, strong community that appeals to many (you see this a lot even today) and their commitment to their beliefs was demonstrated publicly and repeatedly (being fed to lions and what not) which surely made at least some people think, "Well, if they're willing to die for it, they must have something figured out." Also, they grew a lot through natural growth (they did not commit abortion or infanticide, so their fertility rates were higher, and they also adopted orphans regularly--exposed/abandoned children were most often girls, which meant even more women, who then tended to bring in their husbands or at least their children). | [
"By the 4th century Christianity had spread to numerous regions. A number of influential schools of thought had arisen, particularly the Alexandrian and Antiochian philosophical approaches. Other groups, such as the Arians, had also managed to gain influence. However, their positions caused theological conflicts wi... |
Is time discrete or continuous? | > is there is there a "smallest time unit" that is possible?
Not so far as any experiment to date has been able to detect. There are some models in which the Planck time (about 5.391×10^-44 seconds) is the smallest meaningful amount of time, but they're all entirely speculative at this point. | [
"While time is a continuous quantity in both standard quantum mechanics and general relativity, many physicists have suggested that a discrete model of time might work, especially when considering the combination of quantum mechanics with general relativity to produce a theory of quantum gravity.\n",
"Discrete ti... |
what is the appeal of instagram? | Everyone that I know that uses it as their primary photo sharing site sees it as some sort of alternative to Facebook (and they weren't too happy to see Facebook buy Instagram). As for why, I think it's mainly because they were generally annoyed by Facebook due to their particular group of friends on the site, and they were looking for an alternative. Also, everyone that I happen to know in this group were programmers living in the San Francisco area at the time, so who knows how representative my example is of the overall user base. | [
"Instagram is viewed as relatively cheap, quick, flexible and widely available platform. It allows getting immediate feedback from the users, which makes it possible to stay up-to-date with latest changes and trends in fashion and in street style, in particular. Instagram gave life to a specific instagram-based com... |
True or False? Gary Kasparov: "A game of chess can have as many different ways of progression as there are atoms in our solar system" | The sun contains more than 99% of the mass of the solar system, and has a mass of about 2E30 Kg, and the average mass of each atom in the sun (being mostly hydrogen and helium) is going to be approximately 2E-27 Kg
The number of atoms in our universe, therefore, is about (2E30 ) / (2E-27 ) = 1E57 atoms.
This is *extremely* approximate, but it gives us an order of magnitude to work with.
A brief google search suggests that the number of chess games is of the order of 1E120
Assuming these estimates are correct, that means the number of possible chess games is one billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion times greater than the number of atoms in the solar system.
_URL_0_
_URL_2_
_URL_1_ | [
"BULLET::::- Chess on an Infinite plane: One type of infinite chess. Seventy-six pieces are played on an unbounded chessboard. The game uses orthodox chess pieces, plus guards, hawks, and chancellors. The absence of borders makes pieces effectively less powerful (as the king and other pieces cannot be trapped in co... |
How do you think a black African in the Classical Mediterranean would wear their hair? | [This](_URL_0_) exhibition from the Metropolitan Museum of Art might be helpful, because it showcases Greek depictions of "black" Africans, or "Ethiopians". There are some very interesting images there.
| [
"In the Western world, afro-textured hair has historically been treated with disdain, by members of all ethnicities. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Atlantic slave trade saw black Africans forcibly transported from Sub-Saharan Africa to North America and, upon their arrival in the New World, their heads would b... |
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