question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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Have studies been done on whether money can in fact buy happiness - i.e., are rich people happier overall? | "If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right" - >
_URL_0_ - >
"In a 2011 study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy, Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right,” the scholars collected findings from multiple academic papers to distill the chief lessons of the research community on how best to spend to maximize happiness. The study then formulated eight general recommendations and lessons:" | [
"economist Justin Wolfers dispute this and place a much higher importance on money and financial security. Where Easterlin found that happiness didn't necessary correlate to money, Wolfers found in a study of 155 countries that richer countries and people are also generally happier. On this\n",
"Many people stron... |
-what causes someone to pass out? (not alcohol or drug related?) | More often it's a *drop* in blood pressure.
Also, what's called a vasovagal syncope. Your body has a very [important nerve, called the vagus nerve](_URL_1_), that does a whole bunch of stuff. Sometimes it can be triggered accidentally and make your blood pressure go low for a couple seconds, long enough to make you pass out.
This vasovagal response is what happens when someone passes out when seeing blood or experiences a lot of pain, along with [a whole bunch of other reasons](_URL_0_). | [
"BULLET::::- A chronic disease in which a person craves drinks that contain alcohol and is unable to control his or her drinking. A person with this disease also needs to drink greater amounts to get the same effect and has withdrawal symptoms after stopping alcohol use. Alcoholism affects physical and mental healt... |
Did Stalin ever consider making a peace treaty with Hitler during the early German military successes in 1941? | Yes, he may have! A Soviet agent, whose name is in the source that I will cite (and when I get home I'll find his name) was sent to contact the Bulgarian ambassador by Lavrentii Beria. Beria told him to pass on three questions:
1) Why the Germans had broken the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
2) What would be necessary to end the war.
3) Would Hitler be satisfied with Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and the Baltics, a second "Brest-Litovsk".
Beria claimed that the Soviet leadership was doing this to buy time. The ambassador, however, never passed on the offer to the Germans, as he said to the Soviet agent "Even if you are pushed back to the Urals, you will still win".
The book does say that this information comes from a semi-reliable memoir of the Soviet agent, but it's the closest thing we can find to the Soviets making - even if not honestly - a peace overture.
Source: The Court of the Red Tsar, by Simon Sebag-Montefiore. | [
"After Germany in September 1940 entered a Tripartite Pact with Japan and Italy, Ribbentrop wrote to Stalin, inviting Molotov to Berlin for negotiations aimed to create a 'continental bloc' of Germany, Italy, Japan and the USSR that would oppose Britain and the USA. Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the te... |
Indian/Chinese connections to Hellenistic Greece, especially Alexandria | I'm not an expert in this field, but maybe I could just shed some basic understanding of the historical backdrop. From the 3rd century BC to around the year 0, you had in what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan the Graeco-Bactrian/Graeco-Indian Kingdom. These kingdoms were originally satrapies of the Seleucid Empire, but eventually split off. As you can imagine, as part of the Hellenistic world the kingdom was in good contact with the western parts of the Hellenistic world, at least until it was cut off from it by the expanding Parthian Empire in Iran.
There are accounts that a number of the later Greek kings, such as Menander I, converted to Buddhism, so it doesn't seem inconceivable that a portion of this Greek populace would have been aware of, or even converted to, Buddhism or Hinduism. these ideas would naturally permeate at some point back to the center of the Hellenistic world, Alexandria. | [
"These Greek elements penetrated India quite early as shown by the Hellenistic Pataliputra capital (3rd century BC), but the influence became especially strong, particularly in northwestern India, following the invasion of the Greco-Bactrians in 180 BC, when they established the Indo-Greek kingdom in India. Fortifi... |
why are earth solar panels blue and space solar panels orange/brown. | The orange color of the panels around the ISS and some other space applications is [Kapton] (_URL_0_), a polymer (polyimide) that is space rated for holding together electronics. We used to use it a lot when I worked for NASA. The solar panels around the space station are covered in sheets of flexible Kapton so they could be folded and unfolded for delivery. | [
"Pictures acquired during the spacewalk #27 on the final day of exposure indicated that many of the 75 small windows had turned brown. The brown film was clearly a deposit which had precipitated inside the windows during the spaceflight. The appearance of the brown film turned out to depend on two prerequisites: so... |
do you stay sick for longer if you brush your teeth, then continue to use that toothbrush before you fully recover? | Once the immune system has destroyed a type of infection or virus it saves a sample of the successful (t?) cell so that when they encounter it again it is killed in minutes instead of weeks or days. So no. | [
"Dental decay is however easily prevented by reducing acid demineralisation caused by the remaining dental plaque left on teeth after brushing. Risk factors for tooth decay include physical, biological, environmental, behavioural, and lifestyle-related factors such as high numbers of cariogenic bacteria, inadequate... |
Is insulin release proportionate to the amount of sugar one ingests? | Insulin secretion is triggered through a feedback loop, so yes, it's proportionate. | [
"Evidence of impaired first-phase insulin release can be seen in the glucose tolerance test, demonstrated by a substantially elevated blood glucose level at 30 minutes after the ingestion of a glucose load (75 or 100 g of glucose), followed by a slow drop over the next 100 minutes, to remain above 120 mg/100 ml aft... |
How do you study history in college ? | That's really up to your institute and you. A good resource will be the handbook for your programme - [see this 2012 Oxford Brookes handbook as an example.](_URL_0_) See if you can get this document in advance of your arrival; if not, ask for the previous year's edition.
From my own experience historical studies are what you make of them. When choosing my projects, what I tended to do was, in lectures or my individual study, write down 'potential questions' in my notes and mark them with a highlighter. Be sure to take advantage of all your resources; talk to your tutors, to other students, you'll have a blast. | [
"In 1896 the association appointed a \"Committee of Seven\" to develop a national standard for college admission requirements in the field of history. Before this time, individual colleges defined their own entrance requirements. After substantial surveys of prevailing teaching methods, emphases and curricula in se... |
how are episodes of a tv series all around the same length? | Depending on the scriptwriter and how descriptive they are with scenes, usually around a minute is a page long. Also the magic of editing. Many of the skits at the starts of shows that have nothing to do with the actual episode (e.g. The Office) are made for that reason. | [
"The duration of each episode varies depending on the series. Traditionally, series are produced as complete half-hour or nearly half-hour programs; however, many are produced as animated shorts of 10–11 minutes, which can then paired with other shorts to fill a set time period. There are also some short series wit... |
how is pluto, and very small celestial object that is very far from the sun, able to orbit the sun? | Anything will orbit the Sun that is closer to the Sun than to other stars, is much lighter than the Sun, is not fast enough to escape the Sun's gravity, and does not orbit any other object.
The closest star to the Sun is Proxima Centauri, over 4 light-years away. The farthest Pluto gets from the Sun is less than 7 light-hours. If not the Sun, what else is Pluto supposed to orbit? | [
"Pluto's four small moons orbit Pluto at two to four times the distance of Charon, ranging from Styx at 42,700 kilometres to Hydra at 64,800 kilometres from the barycenter of the system. They have nearly circular prograde orbits in the same orbital plane as Charon.\n",
"Pluto is the largest and second-most-massiv... |
how did they first decide that pyrite (fools gold) was not as valuable as gold? | Pyrite isn't similar to gold once you get close
It's Iron sulfide so when you try to melt it to form jewelry you'll discover it has the wrong melting point and ends up wayyy harder than gold and also just looks like iron because that's what it is once you've melted it down
Fools gold is just crappy iron not gold | [
"Goldie's significance has perhaps been overlooked because the many manuscripts and letters from Burns, Lord Kames, and other celebrated men of the day were destroyed during his son's (Lieutenant Goldie R.N.) time away at sea.\n",
"It has been claimed that most of the Earth's gold lies at its core, the metal's hi... |
why can't macromedia make a non-vulnerable flash player? | Because MacroMedia no longer exists.^[[1]](_URL_0_)
...drops mike and walks off stage. | [
"For many years Adobe Flash Player's security record has led many security experts to recommend against installing the player, or to block Flash content. The US-CERT has recommended blocking Flash, and security researcher Charlie Miller recommended \"not to install Flash\"; however, for people still using Flash, In... |
what are blue collar and white collar jobs? are there any other collars? | Blue collar is manual labor. White collar are Professional office jobs. Some people also refer to grey collar which are service jobs that fall in the middle. | [
"Groups of working individuals are typically classified based on the colors of their collars worn at work; these can commonly reflect one's occupation or sometimes gender. White-collar workers are named for the white-collared shirts that were fashionable among office workers in the early and mid-20th century. Blue-... |
How much do we know of the real El Cid? | _URL_0_
This would be a good start for you. It's primary focus is on tackling the myths of El Cid and attempting to find the true man. It is not too academically heavy either. Also a boon is the fact that you can pick up a copy pretty cheap from Amazon.
I was going to recommend the Poem of the Cid, but I found it quite intense and very dry. Read Fletcher first before you go delving head first into the primary sources. | [
"The figure of El Cid has been the source for many literary works, beginning with the Cantar del Mio Cid, an epic poem from the 12th century which gives a partly-fictionalized account of his life. This poem, along with similar later works such as the Mocedades de Rodrigo, contributed to portray El Cid as a chivalri... |
why is much more in taxes taken out of holiday bonuses? | So when your taxes get calculated, it's from a tax table. There are different tax tables based on pay frequency. So, if you are paid every two weeks, your employer consults the table for your pay amount, and the amount listed is what they have to withhold -- which is based on 26 times that pay amount. That works out pretty well...
...until it comes to bonuses. See, they have to do exactly the same thing with the bonuses, but what happens is that since the check is more than usual, the tables estimate your taxes at a higher tax bracket.
In any event, you'll get that money back when you file your taxes next year. | [
"Holiday season parties were the traditional time to announce end-of-year bonuses. For example, in 1945, the New Britain Herald reported that following a Christmas dinner, Rudolph Kloiber presented bonuses to the employees based on the time they worked for the company. Employees working five or more years received ... |
when falling from most heights, why is it common to perform a roll upon landing? | It is a way to disperse the energy of landing.
& #x200B;
If you jump off a 10 foot high wall and land on your feet keeping your knees locked it will hurt because all the energy of your weight hitting the ground is slammed into your body at once.
& #x200B;
If you bend your knees as you land and take the strain in your legs then you slow down and stop rather than suddenly stopping. This hurts less.
& #x200B;
If you land on your toes leaning forwards and propel yourself into a forwards roll then you stop even more gradually. The energy of the weight of your body hitting the ground is taken over a few seconds as you roll instead of one sharp impact.
& #x200B;
This happens because you transferred some of your momentum from straight down to "down and forwards". | [
"When the athlete drops down to the floor, the body experiences an impact upon landing. The higher the height of the step-off platform, the greater the impact force upon landing. This creates a shock to the body which the body responds to by undergoing a strong involuntary muscular contraction to prevent the body f... |
can someone explain to how wall street and the bankers messed up the us economy? | One of the reasons people are so upset with Banks is this thing called the "Mortgage crisis."
Basically, in the past, houses were a very safe investment. People would borrow money from banks to buy houses and it was very safe because it was very rare that someone would not pay the bank back. It made a lot of money because they could charge a fairly low interest rate, but the loan would exist for upwards of 30 years.
Then, someone came up with the idea of selling mortgages. So say you have $10 and I want to buy lunch. I borrow the $10 from you and promise that I will pay you $2 for every day that I don't pay you back. So you know that I won't pay you back for two days, so you will make $4 from me. Instead of holding onto this loan, you tell Fred that I owe you $10. So you tell Fred that if he gives you $12, then you would sell him my debt. He then takes my debt and I owe HIM $14 after the end of the two days. So he makes $2 and you make $2 on the deal and I get lunch.
Now you are making enough money doing this, so you do this a lot. You start lending out money to a lot of people, then bundling these debts together and selling them to other people. This is fine, because people are still paying off the debts so everyone is making money (except the people paying, but they get a house).
Because this is so profitable, you start lending out money to people who have no job or other source of income. People who have no chance to pay you back. You then sell that debt to Fred. You make your $2, but I can't pay Fred, so Fred now loses $12 and I lose my "lunch" (Ok, the analogy started to break down here).
The banks loaned out money that people had no chance to repay, then went on Wall Street and started selling these mortgages for a lot of money claiming that they were "safe" bets. The people lost their houses, because they couldn't pay their mortgages and the people who bought the mortgages lost their money, but the banks still made their money.
As a footnote, the people who took out the mortgages shouldn't have taken the mortgages they couldn't pay back and the people buying the mortgages from the banks should have done better research into what they were buying and the regulating bodies should have seen what was going on and raised red flags earlier. There is a lot of blame to go around, but the banks are the ones who didn't lose as much (and were bailed out for what they did lose).
That's one of the reasons people are so mad at the banks specifically. Then there's a lot of talk of inequality in pay and taxes. This is answered well by DerBafog's response.
Edit: I'm an idiot and always say "loose" when I mean "lose" | [
"Wall Street has become synonymous with financial interests, often used negatively. During the subprime mortgage crisis from 2007–10, Wall Street financing was blamed as one of the causes, although most commentators blame an interplay of factors. The U.S. government with the Troubled Asset Relief Program bailed out... |
Latin Pronunciation | Classical Latin pronunciation would be:
Kī-sah-rā-uh
Hard "C" as in "cake," long "i" as in "fly," soft a, soft kinda-rolled r (if you know Spanish, it's not like "perro" but "pero"), long "a" as in "ate," soft unaccented final vowel | [
"The accentual system of Latin is well-known, partly from statements by Roman grammarians and partly from agreements among the Romance languages on the location of tonic accent: the tonic accent in Latin fell three syllables before the end of any word with three or more syllables, unless the second-to-last syllable... |
why do monks have shaved heads? is there something in the bible? | Do Christian monks shave their heads? I thought that was more of a Buddhist monk thing. | [
"Head-shaving is a part of some Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jain and Hindu traditions. Buddhist and Christian monks generally undergo some form of head-shaving or tonsure during their induction into monastic life; in Thailand monks shave their eyebrows as well. Brahmin children have their heads ritualistically sha... |
what does the phrase "twice removed" or even "removed" mean when referring to a family member? | All that removed means is that there's a generational difference from you. Your parents' first cousins are your first cousins once removed. Your grandparents' first cousins are your first cousins twice removed. So it goes up or down (your cousins' kids are your first cousins once removed as well.)
First and second and third and so on indicate how many generations you have to go back to find first cousins. Your first cousins are your parents' siblings' kids. When you have kids and your first cousins have kids, those kids will be second cousins (and your first cousin once removed). When those kids have kids, they will be third cousins (and your first cousins twice removed).
Hope this helps and didn't just make it worse. :) | [
"The ending \"-ii\" which appears in the inflected forms of some nouns of foreign origin, which have \"-ia\" in the nominative case (always after , , , and ; sometimes after , , and other consonants), is pronounced as , with the palatalization of the preceding consonant. For example, \"dalii\" (genitive of \"dalia\... |
Did other countries look at the USA's rise like we currently look at Chinas? If so what was predicted to happen? | Tocqueville is certainly the most famous in this regard writing in 1835
"There are two great peoples on the earth today who, starting from different points, seem to advance toward the same goal: these are the Russians and the Anglo-Americans.
Both have grown largely in obscurity; and while men's regards were occupied elsewhere, they have suddenly taken their place in the first rank of nations, and the world has learned of their birth and of their greatness almost at the same time.
All other peoples appear to have nearly reached the limits that nature has drawn and to have nothing more to do than preserve themselves; but these are growing: all the others have halted or advance only with a thousand efforts; these alone march ahead at an easy and rapid pace on a course whose bounds the eye cannot yet perceive.
The American struggles against the obstacles that nature opposes to him; the Russian grapples with men. The one combats the wilderness and barbarism, the other, civilization vested with all its arms: thus the conquests of the American are made with the plowshare of the laborer, those of the Russian, with the sword of the soldier.
To attain his goal, the first relies on personal interest and allows the force and the reason of individuals to act, without directing them.
The second in a way concentrates all the power of society in one man. The one has freedom for his principal means of action; the other servitude.
Their point of departure is different, their ways are diverse; nonetheless, each of them seem called by a secret design of Providence to hold the destinies of half the world in its hands one day"
Napoleon also predicted that the Louisiana purchase would lead to an American Empire, but it would take 100 years to come to within fruition.
Simon Bolivar was already wary of the rise of the United States in the early 19th century, attempting to distance Gran Colombia and bind the rest of Latin America closer together. I am not sure who coined the term, but I have seen an increasing reference to the "Colossus of the North" during this same time period in Latin America. I will try to find some quotes if possible. | [
"Furthermore, U.S. populist attitudes towards the People's Republic of China are negative, where China is viewed as an economic adversary rather than a friendly rival. A 2015 Pew Research poll found that 60% of Americans view the loss of jobs to China as very serious, compared to only 21% who view the tensions betw... |
Are there any plausible genetic modifications or physiology that could produce a Fire Breathing Dragon? | Well, there is the Bombardier Beetle, which relies on mixing two organic chemicals that form a kind of steam explosion. Only time will tell if it will evolve into fire breathing, but it seems to be going in your desired direction: _URL_0_ | [
"Some dragons are also capable of breathing fire, known as \"Fire-drakes\", or \"Urulóki\" (singular \"Urulokë\") in Quenya. It is not entirely clear whether the term \"Urulóki\" referred only to the first dragons such as Glaurung that could breathe fire but were wingless, or to any dragon that could breathe fire, ... |
why are there not increase cases of cancer when woman go through pregnancy. with all of the changes in the body and the division of cells wouldn’t there be a higher risk or does the body have a failsafe due to needing to procreate? | Some types of breast cancer do appear and reproduce incredibly fast during pregnancy. I know women who had to choose between their baby and their lives. It's horrific. | [
"In early pregnancy, levels of estrogen, progesterone, estradiol increase, leading to breast growth in preparation for lactation. Proponents speculate that if this process is interrupted by an abortion or miscarriage—before full maturity (differentiation) in the third trimester—then more immature cells could be lef... |
how do we measure the mass of the universe? is it possible we didn't count it all? | We *know* we didn't count it all. The stuff we didn't count is dark matter. We didn't count it because we can't find it. That's the mystery...we know it's there because of it's gravity but we can't find it. | [
"The mass of the observable universe is often quoted as 10 tonnes or 10 kg. In this context, mass refers to ordinary matter and includes the interstellar medium (ISM) and the intergalactic medium (IGM). However, it excludes dark matter and dark energy. This quoted value for the mass of ordinary matter in the univer... |
how does the word assume differ from infer? | when you infer you use logic to reach an conclusion based on other facts you know adding up to find a truth. When you assume you are just reusing something you may have heard in the past or decided on by yourself without using logic to determine whether it is valid or not. | [
"The term \"assumption\" is actually broader than its standard use, etymologically speaking. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) indicates its Latin source as \"assumere\" (\"accept, to take to oneself, adopt, usurp\"), which is a conjunction of \"ad-\" (\"to, towards, at\") and \"sumere\" (to take). The root survi... |
While riding the métro in Paris, I was pondering Faraday's Laws. | It wouldn't work, unfortunately - the electric power you comes from the train's kinetic energy, which means the train requires more power. Overall it will always be a net loss. | [
"On 20 April 1896, Paris adopted the Fulgence Bienvenüe project, which was to serve only the city proper of Paris. Many Parisians worried that extending lines to industrial suburbs would reduce the safety of the city. Paris forbade lines to the inner suburbs and, as a guarantee, Métro trains were to run on the righ... |
'Allies' seems to imply a sense of the 'moral high ground' , and I figured it highly unlikely that the faction would be known as such by other nations round the world. I was just wondering what the axis powers called the allied nations when collectively referred to, or if they're still called allies | Does it imply that? At least strictly [as defined in a dictionary](_URL_3_), it is a fairly non-judgemental term about cooperation:
> a state formally cooperating with another for a military or other purpose, typically by treaty.
So I have to wonder whether the impression of "moral high ground" that you have comes *from* the fact that "The Allied Powers" is a common term used for the, well, Allies (although not the only one. See '[Declaration by United Nations](_URL_2_)' the term having been suggested by Roosevelt).
In any case, the 'Allies' was used by the Axis to refer to their enemies, collectively. Here are two excerpts from [Hitler's Table Talk](_URL_5_) where he makes reference to the Allies:
> When we Germans pass judgment on the Duce, we must bear all these considerations well in mind, not forgetting that, when ali is said and done, it is the Duce we have to thank for the fact that Italy is not in the war on the side of the Allies. When some aspects of our alliance with Italy appear irksome to us, let us not forget that the King and his Court have much too far-reaching powers of intervention both in military matters and in affairs of State.
------
> The only time that our conversations lasted for nearly two days was when things were going badly in Albania, and I had to try to restore the Duce's morale. It is easy, therefore, by comparison to imagine how enormous their difficulties must appear to the Allies.
--------
A few more examples, here is a diary entry fro Goebbels, [6 June 1943](_URL_4_):
> If we worked for storms of applause, it would certainly have had a negative impact on those in the West suffering from Allied bombing.
and from his article "[The Tonnage War](_URL_0_)":
> They might better keep in mind the fact that hundreds of Allied ships have been hit by torpedoes in the Western Atlantic since the U.S. entry into the war.
[For this last one I was able to get the original German, which uses "alliierten" for comparison](_URL_1_):
> Besser dagegen wäre es, wenn sich die Amerikaner die Tatsache vor Augen hielten, daß Hunderte von alliierten Schiffen seit Kriegseintritt der USA.
So in sum, "allies" was used by the Axis, and it doesn't seem that there was a particular feeling that it was self-judgmental to do so. | [
"The Allies of World War II, called the United Nations from the 1 January 1942 declaration, were the countries that together opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War (1939–1945). The Allies promoted the alliance as a means to control German, Japanese and Italian aggression.\n",
"Nearly every country an... |
why does a limit to speed exist? | Everything is travelling through spacetime. Even when you're sitting absolutely still, all your motion is being directed towards moving-through-time, in the futurewards direction.
Here's a graph:
space
^
|
|
|------------ >
_________________ > time
When you start to move, some of that moving-through-time motion is diverted into moving-through-space motion. I can't do the formatting in this comment box, but imagine that arrow gets tilted up slightly from where it intersects the space axis. You're still travelling though time, just less than the person who's sitting still.
Now the more energy you put into travelling through space, the higher that arrow gets tilted and the slower time seems to travel for you (in comparison with the guy sitting still). It takes more and more energy to go faster as you approach the speed of light.
Light travels vertically on our graph. Light is always 0 on the time axis. No time passes at all for a photon, ever. For a photon, everything happens simultaneously. From a photon's point of view, it is emitted and absorbed at the same time. Light is something that invests all of its energy in moving-through-space and none in moving-through-time.
So if by some impossible way (e=mc^2, so you can't accelerate a massive object to light speed) you invested *all* of your energy into travelling through space, you would still only be travelling at the speed of light.
**EDIT:** [Drew the graph in Paint.](_URL_0_) Forgive me.
**EDIT 2:** To clarify some things with that horrific Paint sketch, the yellow is supposed to be light, and it's supposed to be completely vertical, not slightly angled like in the sketch. As the blue guy travels faster, time passes less quickly from his point of view (the time/x-coordinate gets smaller as the space/y-coordinate increases).
This sketch also shows that if our little blue buddy were to somehow impossibly exceed the speed of light, the green arrow would angle backwards and the time value (the x-coordinate) would be negative. This is why people say you would go backwards in time if you exceeded the speed of light (which is impossible).
| [
"Some roads also have minimum speed limits, usually where slow speeds can impede traffic flow or be dangerous. The use of minimum speed limits is not as common as maximum speed limits, since the risks of speed are less common at lower speeds. In some jurisdictions, laws requiring a minimum speed are primarily cente... |
What is an engaging book on the 1960s? | It's very hard to find a good history audiobook. While I can give you several suggestions for many good physical books on the 1960s, the only audiobook that I can think of off the top of my head is Mark Kurlansky's *1968: The Year That Rocked the World*. The book is a great read and looks at the year 1968 within an international context. | [
"In 2009, Leaf published his first full-length nonfiction book, \"The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Sixties\", in which he attacks popular perceptions of the 1960s as a radical decade dominated by hippies, rock music and free love.\n",
"The Fifties (1993) is a history book by David Halberstam centered on the... |
everyone's advice for me (a person in their 20s) is to go travel after college. how the hell do you do that when you have no money? i assume most of my friends are traveling with their parents money. | Well, for most 20 somethings the major cost of travel would be the plane ticket. Even then you can get pretty decent tickets just about anywhere in the world for max-ish 2000-4000$. Even working a minimum type job will get you enough to save up for a 3-6 month trip every now and then. Plus once you travel you can earn money through work-visa programs, student-programs or farming co-ops. If your willing to think a little outside the box you can travel for long periods of time for next to nothing. Of course you are not staying at the Ritz or even the Super-8 motel, or even a hostel. There are super cheap ways to travel for practically nothing like couch surfing. It's hard, it's dirty and it's tiring but at the end of it you get to go to amazing place and meet new people.
I have plenty of friends for example who have travelled to New Zealand and area for a year. They have been saving up for a ticket and a little extra money but worked while they were down their too so that they could travel to other countries in the region, like Malaysia.
| [
"Besides counseling kids and teenagers with drug advice, Kilroy's parents also advise young people who plan to travel for spring break, suggesting to stay in groups, keep an eye on each other and not wander off on their own. They also suggest tourists be aware of travel warnings and abide by foreign laws and regula... |
why is "american" considered a nationality, and not a race? like swedish or german? | Swedish and German are not considered races either, they are also nationalities.
Edit: Many nations in Europe though are homogeneous enough to be considered to have one dominant culture and ethnicity. That is not true for the US, and an ethnicity is not he same as a race. Ethnicity is mostly cultural factors. | [
"Americans are nationals and citizens of the United States of America. Although nationals and citizens make up the majority of Americans, some dual citizens, expatriates, and permanent residents may also claim American nationality. The United States is home to people of many different ethnic origins. As a result, A... |
why can the aging process of alcoholic beverages not be artificially sped up or completely skipped? | Often alcoholic beverages are aged in wooden barrels. During the aging, the beverage is infused with flavour from the wood of the barrel. While theoretically it would be possible to artificially add those flavours, it is difficult to know exactly what and how much to add since those flavours are very subtle and depend on a lot of things, including the wood used, the specific beverage and the time it is aged for. There is also little incentive to do so, as often aged beverages are enthusiast products, and enthusiasts usually aren't very appreciative of artificial flavours. The long aged products are a status symbol as well, and skipping the aging process would diminish their value and prestige as a status symbol. | [
"The impact of alcohol on aging is multifaceted. Evidence shows that alcoholism or chronic alcohol consumption can cause both accelerated (or premature) aging – in which symptoms of aging appear earlier than normal – and exaggerated aging, in which the symptoms appear at the appropriate time but in a more exaggerat... |
There is a container weighing 500 kg, inside it there is a bird weighing 2kg will the total weight of the container be 502 kg or 500 kg, when the bird is in flight ? | It's best to point out the difference between mass and weight before proceeding with the question itself.
The mass of an object refers to the amount of matter that makes up that object. The units used for mass is kilograms. Weight of an object refers to the gravitational force felt by that object. It is measured in newtons.
So for example, if you have a 100 kg object on the surface of the earth, the weight of that object would be 981 N. (mass multiplied by acceleration due to gravity).
As for your question, the mass the system is 502 kg. This would be the same regardless of whether or not the bird was on the ground or flying. This is because there is not change in the amount of matter in the system.
The weight of the system is a bit more complicated. As a matter of definition, we are talking about the apparent weight of the system. The weight of the system will not change since it's defined as mass multiplied by acceleration due to gravity. So unless the mass changes, the weight will not either.
But imagine the container is sitting on top of a weight scale. If the bird is on the surface of the container, the weight read on the scale would be ~4924 N. Roughly 20 N of that comes from the bird. If the bird was in stationary flight (so not moving up or down), the weight would still be the same. This is because the bird would have to apply roughly 20 N downwards with it's wings in order to stay stationary.
[Mythbusters](_URL_0_) did an episode on it and confirmed that the apparent weight does not change.
Hope that makes sense.
| [
"The general limit for weight in flying birds is at about 25 kg, the exceptional \"Argentavis magnificens\" with its size and weight of a good-sized adult human notwithstanding as it evolved under unusual ecological conditions. Large males of the kori bustard (\"Ardeotis kori\") and great bustard (\"Otis tarda\") a... |
why does better quality music( 320 kbps, and so on) occupy more digital memory? | Just like with an image, higher resolution = bigger file size. The bit rate of an audio file (ie 320 Kbps) is essentially the resolution of the song. Higher bit rates = more bits of data per second of music. It has absolutely nothing to do with musical notes like one of the previous answers suggests. | [
"BULLET::::- The use of an additional entropy coding tool, and higher frequency accuracy (due to the larger number of frequency sub-bands used by MP3) explains why MP3 does not need as high a bit rate as MP2 to get an acceptable audio quality. Conversely, MP2 shows a better behavior than MP3 in the time domain, due... |
Statistical polls vs. election results. | Statistics like these can be very misleading. It depends on the area they polled, the economic group, age group, ethnic group. The odds D would win are very hard to determine due to a very small amount of info. They would need to do a broader poll for the best results. I know you're in Iceland so maybe there aren't many differences between geographical areas, but in America polls like these must be taken with a grain of salt.
| [
"For example, a confidence interval can be used to describe how reliable survey results are. In a poll of election–voting intentions, the result might be that 40% of respondents intend to vote for a certain party. A 99% confidence interval for the proportion in the whole population having the same intention on the ... |
how do we take pictures of space while the earth is spinning? | That's only one rotation per day, or roughly 0.25º per minute. Long-exposure photography of the night sky shows exactly the effect you would think, but on the timescale of less than a second, it's fine. | [
"By dropping a vertical down to the Earth's surface it is possible to calculate a ground track that shows which part of the Earth a spacecraft is immediately above, and this is useful for helping to visualise the orbit.\n",
"The photographs produced were time exposures in which a satellite's track appeared as a l... |
why do zippers make a higher-pitched noise when they're pulled faster? | Sounds are vibrations in air. Low pitched sounds are slower vibrations while higher pitched sounds are faster vibrations. Moving a zipper faster pulls it past the teeth faster and produces faster vibrations, thus a higher pitched sound. | [
"This double-mated surface is good at retaining both vacuum and pressure, but the fit must be very tight, to press the surfaces together firmly. Consequently, these zippers are typically very stiff when zipped shut and have minimal flex or stretch. They are hard to open and close because the zipper anvil must bend ... |
how does instagram and/or messenger "know" when a message has been seen or if someone is typing? | It is part of the protocol. If someone reads a message or is typing their app will send this information to your app (via the server). | [
"In Messages, the user's sent communication is aligned to the right, with replies from other people on the left. A user can see if the other iMessage user is typing a message. A pale gray ellipsis appears in the text bubble of the other user when a reply is started. It is also possible to start a conversation on on... |
why is prostitution illegal? | In historic times, prostitution used to lead to illegitimate children (bastards). Children raised illegitimately were poor or poorly brought up, leading to an increase in crime. Prostitution became associated with the ills of society. Banning it was seen as a solution, and in many places it worked. Wide-spread, affordable, effective birth control is a relatively modern invention, and its effects haven't been fully realized yet. | [
"Prostitution is illegal. Under the Suppression of Prostitution Act, enacted in 1949, the act of soliciting or seducing in public is illegal, as is forcing or enticing women into prostitution or owning brothels. The Act also criminalises making financial gain from prostitution, including the sex worker's own earnin... |
How did racism in the US against Asians and other groups compare to that against blacks? | Chinese, Jewish, Hispanic, Whites and even Syrians and Sicilians were lynched in the Jim Crow period though in far smaller numbers than African-Americans. Just to start, there were ~3,500 known lynchings of African Americans from 1880s to the 1960s and ~1,000 lynchings of other groups. There is no way to know exactly how many lynchings occurred in that period, as every act of violence wasn't publicized. Reasons for these lynchings occurred for many the same reason as those perpetrated against African-Americans, perceived crime, sexual misconduct, economic struggle, or simply for reason of race.
Mexican Americans follow after African-Americans with 597 known lynchings between 1848 and 1928, between 1886 and 1910, 29 Sicilians were lynched (eleven of those in one day). Anti-Asian violence was endemic on the Pacific Coast with numerous riots and lynchings happening, one of the most prominent was the Chinese Massacre of 1871 in which a mob descended on the China town of Los Angeles, beating and lynching the immigrant population there. No less than twenty Chinese immigrants were killed. The most notable case of Jewish lynching was that of Atlanta businessman Leo Frank in 1915 though given the blatant anti-semitism of the Second Ku Klux Klan, and other Far Right groups in the 1920s and 1930s, I wouldn't be shocked to learn of more.
I've covered some of the other forms of discrimination and racial formation in the Jim Crow United States [here](_URL_0_)
*Sources*
* Gualtieri, Sarah- *Strange Fruit? Syrian Immigrants, Extralegal Violence and Racial Formation in the Jim Crow South*
* Webb, Clive- *The Lynching of Sicilian Immigrants in the American South, 1886-1910*
* Webb, Clive- *The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928* | [
"Additionally, apart from the historical racial incidents including anti-Asian movements and anti-immigration legislation, Asian Americans are also victims of racism in the United States. According to the Annual Audit of Violence Against Asian Pacific Americans conducted by the NAPALC in 2003, Asian Americans are o... |
what is cancer made of? | Very simply, eli5, every cell has its purpose coded in the DNA and formed by its environment and stuff. There is a cycle to its life, simplified to carry out the purpose, prepare to divide, divide, repeat.
When the DNA gets damaged (from variety of factors - radiation, chemicals, viruses...), the cell usually fails and dies like a program with a corrupted source code. Sometimes though it survives and malfunctions, then it is destroyed by immunity system responses. This happens very often (several times during the day).
Sometimes, though, by a very rare coincidence, a cell malfunctions such that it misses its purpose phase and skips to division AND somehow manages to pose to the immune system as ok not to be destroyed. Its life cycle is very much shortened to prepare for division, divide, repeat.
This also requires a lot of resources and as the whole blob now still manages to pose legit, it gets those resources. This drains the organism, while the tumor can also be harmful just by pressing onto something important.
Then a chunk of it separates and catches on somewhere else and you have a metastasis. Since it all looks like a very important growth/regeneration process it eats all the resources while spreads everywhere. | [
"Cancer is a group of fatal diseases that involves abnormal cell growth that can invade or spread to other parts of the body. They are usually caused by the accumulation of mutations in genes that regulate cell growth and differentiation. Majority of cancer, about 90-95%, are due to genetic mutations from environme... |
why does the cost of housing vary greatly by location while the cost of other consumer products do not? | Because you can't pick up and move a house (easily). Undesirable surroundings will make a house lose value because you are stuck with it, but a TV bought in a crummy area works just as well when you get back home. | [
"Glaeser and Gyourko (2002) argued that while the price of housing was significantly higher than construction costs in Boston, Massachusetts and San Francisco and California, in most of the United States, the price of housing remained \"close to the marginal, physical costs of new construction.\" They argued that d... |
how do doctors know a course of antibiotics is sufficient to kill off harmful bacteria? | Experience and experimental evidence. Once a doctor knows or has a good idea of what type of bacteria is causing the infection, they can prescribe the correct antibiotic (or a broad-spectrum antibiotic if the cause isn't known). As for "how many pills would be just barely enough," that has come through experiment - it's likely that a couple of pills are enough to kill the infection, but double or triple that amount is prescribed in order to guarantee success and correct for patients who don't take their medicines on the right schedule.
I remember reading about a study years ago that showed that three days of treatment was enough to cure something like 90% of pneumonia patients, with no real difference in the group that was given placebos after that first 3-day treatment and the group that was given another week of antibiotics. So they have a good idea of the minimum amount needed from decades of medical research, and they shoot well over that target, as you said, to take a "scorched earth" approach.
And of course, if you have a stronger infection than they thought, or if it's something that the antibiotic couldn't fight, they tell you to come back and they will use something else. I remember a few years ago I was treated for a minor infection on a cut that had to be stitched up - they took a culture and I asked what they needed it for if they were just prescribing amoxicillin anyways. The answer was "Odds are good it'll be what we expect and the amoxicillin will take care of it. In case it's something weird, we can call you asap and bring you back in for a different treatment, but we're treating the most likely thing first so that you can get healthy right away." | [
"Empiric antibiotic therapy refers to the use of antibiotics to treat a suspected bacterial infection despite lack of a specific bacterial diagnosis. Definitive diagnosis of the species of bacteria often occurs through culture of blood, sputum, or urine, and can be delayed by 24 to 72 hours. Antibiotics are general... |
How do people create new religions? What are examples of this? | I'm not a historian, and I don't have a definitive answer for you. But to make an educated guess, I think the ability to do so is highly dependent on the mindset of the population and the pressures on that society. This is a combination of my admittedly limited education in Anthropology and my personal inclinations towards Dawkins' meme theory.
A meme is supposedly the cultural equivalent of a gene; it's a unit of cultural information that can be naturally selected just like genes. The concept was developed and popularized by Richard Dawkins in his book the *Selfish Gene*. If you wanted to read about how he relates it to religion, I'd recommend chapter 5 (pp 190-240) of another of his books, *The God Delusion*. Note that the theory is not concerned with whether or not the memes, in this case, religious teachings, are true or not. It is only concerned with whether or not they are successful. Also, like natural selection, we should expect that successful religions should be well suited to their environment.
Let me give you a scattered list of examples:
The Bab and [Baha'u'lah](_URL_3_), founders of the [Baha'i faith](_URL_4_), lived in persia (contemporary iran) during the quajar dynasty amid religious conflict between muslim sects, zoroastrians, christians and jews. Shia islam was affirmed as the state religion in the preceding dynasty and thus brought a new wave of persecution and forced conversion. (I can't recommend a specif source for this, but it was a major event during the safavid dynasty, any history book on iran should discuss it in detail.) Anyways, Baha'is believe that the founders of the major religions are manifestations of a single god, who wants humanity to behave morally, peacefully and follow him. It's somewhat easy to see why themes of morality, peace and unity would be attractive.
In Micronesia and the surrounding isolated islands, [cargo cults](_URL_1_) developed independently. Pre-industrial, animist societies didn't understand the technology that brought manufactured goods or the culture of the western tradesmen so they assumed it was magic. They built fake landing strips with the hopes of gaining the favor of the sky gods who would hopefully bring them cargo. Check out [this clip](_URL_2_) to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Given the context of their life and their religious beliefs, you can see how they mistook airplanes, cargo ships, and radio towers for divine instruments. I'd recommend *Cargo Cult: Strange Stories of Desire from Melanesia and Beyond* as a good source for more information about the phenomenon.
Joseph Smith lived in New York amid numerous conflicting christian denominations during a period of revivalism called the Second Great Awakening. People believed that god was active among them and spoke directly to individuals. PBS aired a very comprehensive documentary about the history of mormonism, you can watch the entire production [on the PBS website](_URL_0_) Part 1 chapter 2 gives a peek into what is was like to live in the middle of the Second Great Awakening which I believe is essential to understanding how and why the religion spread. Again it's kind of easy to see why a new revelation of christianity, born through divine revelation, with purported historical continuity would be attractive.
This list could go on and on and you could expand this conversation to talk about how ideas evolve but I think you understand what I'm getting at.
edit: spelling
edit: In response to the moderator I decided to expand my response, and point you toward some sources. I hope this answers your question. | [
"BULLET::::- Entrepreneurial model: founders of religions act like entrepreneurs, developing new products (religions) to sell to consumers (to convert people to). According to this model, most founders of new religions already have experience in several religious groups before they begin their own. They take ideas ... |
the different between cmyk and rgb in practical applications (digital illustration. | Yes you should work in cmyk for print. But most importantly you also need to calibrate your monitor using something like a spyder. That is if you're intent on full colour matching, and even then there is a disparity between the two gamuts. The other alternative is to get a swatch book and simply define your colours from that and ignore mismatch on screen. | [
"Comparisons between RGB displays and CMYK prints can be difficult, since the color reproduction technologies and properties are very different. A computer monitor mixes shades of red, green, and blue light to create color pictures. A CMYK printer instead uses light-absorbing cyan, magenta, and yellow inks, whose c... |
At which point did nuclear war become unsurvivable? | This is a hard question to answer for two reasons: 1. lack of clarity on what "unsurvivable" means (some percentage of the world population would survive the immediacy of even the worst nuclear war), and 2. there are technical uncertainties as to the global effect of an all-out nuclear exchange (e.g., whether nuclear winter would occur, whether predicted rises in radioactivity would occur).
In the cases of nuclear winter and global fallout issues, when the raw megatonnage gets to the tens of thousands of megatons range, then it starts to look kind of "unsurvivable" in the sense of "several nations would cease to exist as functioning nations and the world is probably entered into some kind of massive extinction event." By the 1950s [the US arsenal reached that point](_URL_0_). I do not have comparative data for the Soviet arsenal but theirs started to grow to great size by the 1960s and 1970s.
But you will notice that the US arsenal megatonnage decreased dramatically after the 1950s. This is because lower yield weapons became more favored. The nuclear winter scenario may have still applied through the 1980s, given the sheer number of fires that would be started from a "full nuclear exchange," however. But this is unclear; the modeling is inherently difficult.
It is unclear whether a full nuclear exchange today, when arsenals are actually pretty low compared to what they were (a couple thousand deployed weapons, as opposed to tens of thousands of weapons), would produce such a scenario. They are adequate for destroying the countries (again, not 100% fatalities, but enough to render them "not the nations they were") of the US and Russia, but it is unclear what the global effect would be — it depends on your model, and the models are contentious.
I think people tend to get too hung up on the "100% fatalities" scenario, without realizing how bad even 10% of fatalities ("decimation") would be, much less something remarkably like 30% of fatalities (which is on the order of the percentage of Jews who died in the Holocaust), or something hard to imagine like 50% of fatalities (which is on the order of the people who died at Hiroshima). The Black Plague killed 30-60% of Europe's population, and we still talk about it as the ultimate catastrophe, and the historical, social, and economic effects were profound. Even without killing 100% of people, nuclear war would be a profoundly traumatic event. | [
"After the development of hydrogen bombs in the 1950s, and especially after the massive and widely publicized Castle Bravo test accident by the United States in 1954, which spread nuclear fallout over a large area and resulted in the death of at least one Japanese fisherman, the idea of a \"limited\" or \"survivabl... |
what do countries like saudi arabia actually ‘do’ with the weapons purchased from western countries? are they stockpiling guns and missiles for something? | Well, the case of Saudi Arabia, they bomb the hell out of Yemen and create a humanitarian crisis... | [
"Saudi Arabia is the largest importer of Pakistani arms, and has purchased small and medium conventional weaponry worth millions of US Dollars. In 2016, Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF) has secured export order worth US$81 million to Saudi Arabia.\n",
"Weapons are purchased from the USA, UK, France or a private ... |
the math behind this photo | When you add the digits of a number that is divisible by 9, the result is also divisible by 9.
Specifically, if it is a two-digit number (that isn't 99) then the result is exactly 9.
This calculation here is the same as "pick a number between 2 and 10, multiply it by 9, and add the digits". | [
"2. Assume the photo we take is made of 4 blocks that are adjacent to each other and we set the luminance scale for each of the 4 blocks of original photo to be 10, 100, 205, 245. Thus, the image looks like the first figure on the right. \n",
"BULLET::::- Captions to the photographs; full-blood, half-caste (first... |
what is popcorn lung and how can vaping cause it? | Popcorn lung is a disease. While not exclusively caused by, a large number of cases came from, inhaling diacetyl which was used to give microwave popcorn it's buttery flavor.
Hence the name popcorn lung.
Diacetyl is present in many things naturally and can be found in some juices hence the connection. Concentration, temperature, length of exposure, and time to develop a problem among many other factors haven't been properly researched.
[Read more here on snopes](_URL_0_) | [
"Bronchiolitis obliterans (BO), also known as obliterative bronchiolitis and popcorn lung, is a disease that results in obstruction of the smallest airways of the lungs (bronchioles) due to inflammation. Symptoms include a dry cough, shortness of breath, wheezing and feeling tired. These symptoms generally get wors... |
The standards of a Roman soldier. | It depends hugely on the era you're talking about and what legion / where it was stationed / who their commander was.
I'd suggest trying to snag a copy of "De Re Militari" by Vegetius. [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) if you want to just take a gander online. It's a short read and basically tries to explain in the context of the late empire, why the earlier empires army was so superior. It goes into great detail (it was actually used as a guide by subsequent militaries for hundreds of years) on the actual training regimen, discipline, how to keep troops healthy, and small unit tactics. It's great because it gives you very detailed info on what (at least they thought) the Roman army was like at it's height. You can also infer, by the fact that he's talking about a particular topic, that the Roman army of the late Empire was deficient in a particular area.
If you're comparing it to contemporary military experience it's actually pretty similar in terms of cleanliness (account for the much poorer understanding of hygiene / health 2000 years ago) / organizational standards. When I was reading it the first time it felt like sections of it were written by one of my drill sergeants in basic training.
& #x200B;
Small sample to give you the gist:
" In former times the discipline was so strict that the tribunes or officers above mentioned not only caused the troops under their command to be exercised daily in their presence, but were themselves so perfect in their military exercises as to set them the example. Nothing does so much honor to the abilities or application of the tribune as the appearance and discipline of the soldiers, when their apparel is neat and clean, their arms bright and in good order and when they perform their exercises and evolutions with dexterity. "
Another good read is Adrian Goldsworthy's "The Complete Roman Army" which will give a more complete picture of what the army was like in different periods.
Sorry for being more homeworky then answerey, but happy to try and answer any more specific questions you might have! | [
"In military stratagems it was sometimes necessary to conceal the standards. Although the Romans commonly considered it a point of honour to preserve their standards, in some cases of extreme danger the leader himself threw them among the ranks of the enemy in order to divert their attention or to animate his own s... |
Small lasers are invisible, but what about very large ones? | The laser beam itself isn't visible from the side, because it's collimated. When you "see" the beam, you're actually seeing effects from the beam passing through the air, such as reflection.
Most green laser pointers produce a beam that's easily seen at night because of [Rayleigh scattering](_URL_0_). The light is reflected by nitrogen molecules (and others, water, etc) along with airborne dust.
Very high powered lasers can actually ionize the air, which can produce light as well (if a current travels down the path). However, high powered lasers are easily seen even without ionization, again due to Rayleigh scattering. | [
"Producing laser beams that are visible in normal air requires a relatively powerful laser, at least 20 mW, depending on the laser type and instrument design. However, it takes a considerably more powerful laser to yield visually spectacular results, generally 500 mW or more. In any case, class IIIb or IV lasers ar... |
Why can't we store anti-matter simply, like in a bag? | Yes, some particles and their antiparticles form bound states for a moment, a mix of up/anti-up and down/anti-down quarks make up the pi^0 meson. But these particles also inevitably decay.
As for an atom, surely the positron of one and the electron of the other get much closer than the nuclei. Thus, the positron and electron will be more attracted to each other than they are repelled by the opposing nucleus. They annhilate and then the nuclei are free to attract to each other, unscreened by the opposing atom's electron.
Furthermore, remember that the thing that prevents you from passing straight through something is the interaction of the electron clouds with each other. So the very thing that would "contain" a bag of antimatter is the thing that will doom it. The electron cloud will annihilate with the positron cloud. | [
"A bag may or may not be disposable; however, even a disposable bag can often be used many times, for economic and environmental reasons. On the other hand, there may be logistic or hygienic reasons to use a bag only once. For example, a garbage bag is often disposed of with its content. A bag for packaging a dispo... |
How has the cost and speed of travel changed from middle ages to today? | Leisure holiday travel for the masses only began with the advent of a middle class in a capitalist economy. The first travel guides were published in the late 18th / early 19th century. So whereas the wealthy could always "travel", the idea of it as a thing the masses could do only started when a societal class with disposal income and time was born in Europe during the industrial revolution. (Source: Age of Capital, Eric Hobsbawm.)
For costs, I'm sure somebody else may be able to answer. It is always difficult translate historical costs into modern costs. For travel times, it obviously took a lot longer. So the first travel guides focused on "European" vacations (travelling to Provence, Italy, Greece, etc) for the middle classes developing in France, England, Germany and the low countries. My guess is from there guides to the "Holy Land" would have been next. From there, travel to either Africa / Asia or the New World would have been far to expensive and time consuming to be realistic for the middle classes before the advent of regularly scheduled oceanic passenger transportation.
For an ancient example of a "travel guide" see Pausanias. | [
"All through the Middle Ages improvements were few and second rate. Transport became slow and awkward to use. The early modern period saw great improvements. There was a very quick production of canals connecting rivers. It also saw great changes in oceanic shipping. Rather than expensive galleys, wind powered ship... |
all publicity is good publicity. | The goal of advertising is to make people aware you exist. People can't buy your products/services of they don't know you exist.
So that saying means that anything that gets people talking about your company is good, because it increases the number of people who've heard of you. | [
"The use of publicity is also known to be an important strategic element and promotional tool due to its effect of intentional exposure on a consumer. This helps publicity gain a beneficial advantage over other marketing aspects such as Advertising alongside its high credibility. Favourable publicity is also create... |
Scientists seem to disagree about the rate of the expansion of the universe, it is possible that the rate is different depending on location? | In a sense, this is sort of what gravity is - on some scales, if there's enough matter around, things are locally contracting rather than expanding.
But the bigger scales you look at, the more uniform the universe gets, and it trends towards a uniform universal expansion. So it's unlikely you'll have really big deviations on a big scale. *But* it's not completely *impossible*, depending on who you ask. There has been one argument that you could explain dark energy this way. If the universe was just a bit uneven on a very large scale, and our entire visible universe is an underdense bubble, then that would cause the observed acceleration. My understanding is that this is pretty unlikely though - we would be assuming that our local part of the universe is extremely unusual compared to the rest of the universe, which is always possible, but not very convincing. | [
"Current evidence suggests that the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating, which means that the second derivative of the scale factor formula_23 is positive, or equivalently that the first derivative formula_24 is increasing over time. This also implies that any given galaxy recedes from us with increasing... |
how do third party sites generate unlock codes for phones, and why do they charge? | All legal unlock methods (the kind that don't void your warranty) are straight from the manufacturer. The manufacturer of your phone keeps a large private database, and each phone has a unique unlock code. A reseller pays the manufacturer money to be able to search this database.
There is no generator, as they are unique to YOUR phone. Every phone has a unique code, called the IMEI, that is entered while running the search for the unlock code.
There are several other ways to unlock your phone, such as a SIM hack, which is a thin circuit board, between the SIM card and the phone contacts, that can be used to emulate a carrier's SIM format.
As an aside, unlock codes are usually not avail for hot, brand new phones, because the phone usually has a 3 month or so exclusivity contract with a certain carrier, and they get a lot of money to keep it that way. | [
"Some companies offer an online unlocking service. This service requires that individuals who wish to unlock a handset provide their IMEI number and sometimes also country and operator details to the company, either via email or a web site. The company will then provide the unlock code for the handset. For some bra... |
why is pizza in northeast usa so much better than the rest of the country? | _URL_0_
If you look at the map, and know that pizza is a dish that originates in a certain boot-shaped country in the south of Europe, I think you'll find it easy to understand. | [
"Much of Italian-American cuisine is based on that found in Campania and Sicily, heavily Americanized to reflect ingredients and conditions found in the United States. Most pizza eaten around the world derives ultimately from the Neapolitan style, if somewhat thicker and usually with more toppings in terms of quant... |
when the internet was created, why was the deep web created? why is the internet so huge? | The "deep web" is nothing special, it's just a part of the world wide web that isn't indexed by search engines. Things like your bank account, your reddit preferences, your Facebook front page, are all a part of the "deep web". It's a natural part of the world wide web, it wasn't "created" in any sense. | [
"BULLET::::- Internet – The internet arose because of extensive research on ARPANET between various university, corporations, and ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency), an agency of the Department of Defense. Scientist theorized a network of computers connected to each other. Computing capabilities contributed to... |
do cars burn more fuel at a faster or slower speed? | More fuel in general or more fuel per distance traveled?
In general speed isn't a great representative of fuel spent. Maintaining speed isn't overly difficult/costly in terms of fuel, while accelerating is. A good rule of thumb would be, you spend more fuel the further down you have the accelerator pressed.
In terms of fuel per distance (mpg) it's a little bit of both. Cars today are typically optimized in design to perform best (based on shape and gearing primarily) to perform best at highway speeds (roughly 60-70mph). That is to say they will get worse gas milage above or below this target speed. | [
"Lowering speed reduces fuel consumption because the drag imparted by a fluid increases quadratically with increase in speed. Thus traveling twice as fast requires four times as much energy (and therefore fuel) for a given distance, which is why driving an automobile at requires less than 85% of the power required ... |
why do we refer inanimate objects as "she" more than (if not always) "he"? | Because men own boats or hobby cars more often, and they don't want to sound gay. "Later today I'm going to wax and shine my Brucey" | [
"There is a distinction in third person singular between animate and inanimate: \"ta\" is used for humans and animals (corresponding to he/him, she/her, and it when used about an animal), and \"it\" about things and objects. If the speaker wishes to distinguish gender, there is also third person singular ela (she, ... |
What happens when a nerve gets bruised? The funny bone for example? | The peripheral nerves in your ulnar nerve are just bundles of myelinated/unmyelinated axons with satellite cells interspersed.
If you hit your ulnar nerve and are feeling pain it's probably because you disrupted the CT, schwann cells, burst some capillaries, or broke some axons. Any of these happening will elicit some immune or repair response in your body. If you damaged your myelination, or axons, you could lose the ability to propagate an action potential through them. | [
"Several theories exist to explain the possible causes of this pain syndrome. It was once believed that the nerve was compressed in the opening from the inside to the outside of the skull; but leading research indicates that it is an enlarged or lengthened blood vessel – most commonly the superior cerebellar artery... |
how are successive generations of data standards (usb, hdmi etc.) able to pack more features (data speed, quality etc.) into the same form factor ? | They key is almost always that they become more able to put the same amount of data in a smaller physical space, either die to precision in reading or writing mechanisms.
Imagine taking a 1st grader and having them write out a whole page about their day. Their writing will be rather large, so the amount of information they put in there will be limited. Ask someone in college to do the same task and they will be able to write cleaner and more precisely, allowing them to actually put more information on the page.
The same is true with most evolving standards. They can either write or read more precisely (or both), allowing them to do things like send signals in shorter pulses, which allows for more data over the same time. | [
"BULLET::::- The new data format also allows for the implementation of a series of applications that are compatible with respect to the data in spite of different orientation. In this way it is possible to achieve compatibility and, therefore, technological uniformity between manufacturer, trade, and end user syste... |
what is the most efficient method of consuming food in an attempt to gain considerable weight? | Drinking your calories. A mass gainer shake could easily surpass 800 cal per serving.Also follow r/gainit for more. | [
"Weight in the form of food can also be reduced by choosing foods that have the highest ratio of calories per weight. Proteins and carbohydrates have approximately 4 kcal per gram whereas fat has 9 kcal per gram, thus carrying foods high in fat content can reduce weight, such as:\n",
"The efficiency of conversion... |
where do the common aesthetical themes for elves and dwarves used in movies and games come from? | Pretty much all of it comes from the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, mainly Lord of the Rings. | [
"Glorantha shares some fantasy tropes such as dwarves, elves, trolls, giants, but has developed them differently to the more conventional versions based on the work of Tolkien. Dwarves are literally made of stone and exist as manifest rigid inflexible laws of creation, while elves are intelligent, mobile plants. Gl... |
Can neutrinos pass through a black hole? | You know the saying "All roads lead to Rome?" The equivalent for black holes is "all paths lead to the center." | [
"BULLET::::- It has been suggested that a small black hole passing through the Earth would produce a detectable acoustic signal. Because of its tiny diameter, large mass compared to a nucleon, and relatively high speed, such primordial black holes would simply transit Earth virtually unimpeded with only a few impac... |
What's the closest another star has been to the solar system? | Gliese 710 will pass about a light-year from the sun in 1.5 million years or so.
_URL_0_ | [
"At approximately away it is one of the nearest stars to the Solar System; only the Alpha Centauri system, Barnard's Star, and Wolf 359 and the brown dwarfs Luhman 16 and WISE 0855−0714 are known to be closer. Because of its proximity it is a frequent subject for astronomical surveys and other research and thus is ... |
how does capital letters in username not matter? | a developer can set if they want something to be case sensitive or not. Login and user names (not passwords) are usually not case sensitive to make it easy on the user logging in and so that there is no confusion among users of the site about user names.
For example, they don't want people to confuse these user names, which all are really similar, if they were case sensitive it would be hell:
reddituser, Reddituser, reddiTuser, REDDITUSER, reddituseR, RedditUser -- if it was case sensitive, these would all be different accounts but thats hard to tell. If its not case sensitive, only one user can have the account.
and so on... it would be quite confusing if usernames were case sensitive. | [
"Capitalisation in English, in terms of the general orthographic rules independent of context (e.g. title vs. heading vs. text), is universally standardised for formal writing. Capital letters are used as the first letter of a sentence, a proper noun, or a proper adjective. The names of the days of the week and the... |
Did they really dance like that at Victorian Balls? | It can be difficult to understand the historical approach to dancing when one is used to modern informal dancing, or two-person styles like the waltz or salsa. Yes, people did perform dances all together in lines.
Thoinot Arbeau (Jehan Tabourot) published *Orchésographie* in 1588, and John Playford published [*The English Dancing Master, or Plaine and Easy Rules for the Dancing of Country Dances*](_URL_0_) in 1651. (You can find copies of them and more [here](_URL_1_).) These are two of our earliest sources for what dancing looked like historically, and both describe combinations of basic figures to be performed by a number of dancers at the same time. Arbeau's dances consisted of fairly simple steps - single sideways steps, double sideways steps, kicks, and caprioles (basically, jumping while kicking like mad) - in different combinations, sometimes in circles and sometimes in lines. Playford's encompassed more figures: leading up or down (couples taking hands and dancing/walking "up" or "down" the line), setting (facing the partner in the opposite line and doing some fancy sideways steps), slipping (couples taking both hands and taking sideways steps together), arming (couples taking each other's arms and moving in a circle), and others. That being said, these descriptions of Playford's steps are *reconstructions*, as he did not define them in his work the way Arbeau did, and we cannot be 100% certain of what Playford meant. Although Playford's book was being issued in new editions pretty regularly until the 1730s, in 1709 John Young revamped it, removing pieces that were too dated and adding new ones that suited modern tastes. Dancing masters who didn't write anything down also existed, of course, and other people went on to write their own treatises on dancing.
By the late 18th century, people were commonly performing country dances (the stereotypical "men in one line, women in another" situation, with the couple at the top of the double line choosing the song and choosing their own figures; as they interacted with the couples below them, those couples would pick up said figures, and eventually both lines would be dancing), cotillions (dances with four couples in two lines, with set steps), and reels (less formal dances); the minuet (a two-person dance) was holding on in instructional books as a way to open a ball, but it was quite archaic.
You wouldn't see a room full of couples dancing outside of these patterns until the waltz, which appeared on the continent and spread to Great Britain in the 1810s. This didn't look exactly like the waltz does today, but it was similar enough to be scandalous - two people clinging to each other for an entire dance! Lord Byron even wrote a poem about how sexy it was. However, dances performed by groups of people *together* continued to be fashionable and popular: quadrilles, dances for four couples in a square, which had set figures like the cotillion; and a number of dances that were done on the country dance model, in rows and with figures that could be arranged by the head couple or caller/prompter. Quadrilles continued to be popular through the Victorian era, and group game-dances like the "Germans" were soon introduced and popular as well, but by the 1830s couple-dancing had become normal enough for dances involving a "gallop", rushing about in a ballroom hold, to be done without comment. While Germans and quadrilles continued to be performed through to the end of the century, more and more couple dances were added to the fashionable repertoire, and in the early 20th century the concept of groups dancing together socially was killed dead.
So, technically they did not really perform many dances in long lines at Victorian balls, but I think it's possible that you're confusing the Victorian and Regency periods - the Regency was prior to the Victorian period, during the period where Victoria's uncle, George IV, was the regent for his father (1811-1820), and often containing his reign as king as well (1820-1830). Regency fashion involves high waistlines for women and no wigs for men; popular Regency movies are *Pride and Prejudice*, *Sense and Sensibility*, and *Emma*. | [
"When the dance first appeared in the early 19th century, it was considered a scandalous dance, similar to how rock and roll was perceived in the 1950s. In the mid-19th century it was thought to be extremely immoral by respectable society. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the cancan was viewed as much more... |
What prevents a man-in-the-middle from spoofing a certificate authority? | Your web browser stores root CA that have been used to sign every CA that you will encounter pretty much.
So your browser knows that Amazon is signed by some CA.
Could your browser be compromised? Yes, someone could have tricked you into installing a CA into your browser that has been used to sign fake Amazon. This is done regularly for entirely valid reasons. | [
"This means that the user (\"Bob\") cannot decrypt it without a currently valid certificate and also that the certificate authority cannot decrypt the message as they don't have the user's private key (i.e., there is no implicit escrow as with ID-based cryptography, as the double encryption means they cannot decryp... |
how do we measure data that can be stored in brains or sperm cells in units like byte? | Anytime you can manipulate something to represent two values (e.g. on or off, present or not present, up or down etc.) you have 1 bit of binary information. When you have 8 of these switches you can manipulate, you have the potential to represent one byte of data.
These switches can also be organic in form, such as biological cells. We can look at how we can manipulate or deform these cells to record information using binary values. This could, for example, work by manipulating the base pairs of the DNA code stored in the cell.
So long as you have a way of manipulating it to represent two values, you have a bit of information. If you have a way of manipulating 4 values (e.g. DNA pairs of G-C, C-G, T-A, or A-T) that is effectively the same as 2 bits of information per pair. | [
"The byte is a common unit of measurement of information (kilobyte, kibibyte, megabyte, mebibyte, gigabyte, gibibyte, terabyte, tebibyte, etc.); for the purpose of this article, a byte is a group of 8 bits (octet), a nibble is a group of four bits. Historically, both assumptions have not always been true.\n",
"In... |
Expanding bubbles in a multi-verse: what happens when they intersect? | You get a "[domain wall](_URL_0_)" with two (potentially [false](_URL_1_)) vacua on either side, and the vacuum with the lower energy wins. Associated with a domain wall, of course, there is a lot of energy (the cost for continuous fields which have to go through the large potential barrier between the vacua). A domain wall can be modeled as a classical surface with some tension. Much of this was worked out in a classic [paper by Coleman and de Luccia](_URL_2_).
EDIT: I forgot to say that the domain wall will (probably) expand outward at the speed of light. What I meant by the lower vacuum winning was that the bubble with lower vacuum energy will "eat into" the other bubble. | [
"Bubbles are generated when two distinct paths start and end at the same nodes. Normally bubbles are caused by errors or biological variants. These errors are removed using the Tour Bus algorithm, which is similar to a Dijkstra's algorithm, a breadth-first search that detects the best path to follow and determines ... |
why is hiv more common in africa than it is in india? | hiv originated in africa, and it's actually a rather slow virus, so it's still more common there than anywhere else. | [
"Countries in North Africa and the Horn of Africa have significantly lower prevalence rates, as their populations typically engage in fewer high-risk cultural patterns that have been implicated in the virus' spread in Sub-Saharan Africa. Southern Africa is the worst affected region on the continent. As of 2011, HIV... |
why does the us government bail out general motors every time they go under? | > every time they go under
You mean once? | [
"General Motors placed the factory on standby until at least 2015 when the company and employee unions negotiate a new contract. The factory was one of three — along with Orion Assembly and Spring Hill Manufacturing - that General Motors kept on standby during their bankruptcy. It was the only one still on standby ... |
What differentiates brain matter from other matter within our bodies? | The cells that give our brain the capacity to think are called neurons. Basically, 'thinking' is alot of neurons sending special signals to each other. While pretty much all the cells in your body communicate with neighbouring cells, neurons have ways of communicating to other parts of the body as well.
Neurons communicate through so-called action-potentials. These are caused by fluctuations of certain ions (Na, K, Cl, Ca) that cause ion channels (gates that actively or passively exchange ions) to open, which cause the ion fluctuation to pass further along the neuron. Whenever the fluctuation reaches the end of a neuron (called the Axon) special molecules are released. These are called neurotransmitters. Dopamine or adrenaline are examples of substances that can act like neurotransmitters. The axon releases the neurotransmitter into an area (called the synapse) that typically surrounded by parts of other neurons. These parts, called dendrites, have receptors that respond to these neurotransmitters. If sufficient neurotransmitter is secreted by neighbouring axons, a new action potential can occur in the receiving cells. This signal will then be transmitted along the neuron to its axons, which can then signal other neurons in turn. This is the basis of neuron interaction.
The neurons in our body can be very small (e.g. when they only connect to neurons in our brain) or can be very long (e.g. when they communicate with the muscles in our extremities). In the brain, they often form a very complex network, with each individual neuron receiving input from hundreds or thousands of other neurons, and in turn signal to a multitude of receiving neurons. The combined input of so many neurons in a network allows for very complex interactions.
Aside from neurons connecting with other neurons, they can also release molecules into the blood (e.g. certain hormones). For instance, there is a system called the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis that is responsible for our physiological response to stress. Neurons in the hypothalamus receive input from the body whenever the body is under stress. Neurons in the hypothalamus releases the hormone CRH, which travels to the pituitary gland. Here, neurons become activated by CRH to produce ACTH, which they release into the blood. When it reaches the adrenal gland, cortisol is produced, which helps us deal with immediate stress. For instance, it makes you more allert and it can affect energy storage so that more energy becomes available to the body. It also supressess inflammation. Unfortunately, long term exposure to cortisol can be a bad thing, as it also inhibits energy expenditure of other vital systems (e.g. cortisol is known to inhibit the immunesystem).
The reaction you feel when a group of neurons becomes activates depends a lot on the neurons they are connected to, and to the neurotransmitter they secrete. Relase of some neurotransmitters might inhibit activation of another neuron, while different neurons attached to the same neuron may release an activating neurotransmitters.
Additionally, neurons can change under the influence of activation (an attribute called plasticity). Some neurons might become more sensitive to activation by a neurotransmitter that will strengthen the response to certain input (for instance memories associated with certain smells or visual input). Alternatively, neurons can become more resilient to activation. The best example of this would be activation of neurons sensitive to dopamine in drug addicts. Heroin users, for instance, require a lot more heroin to experience the full effects of the drug than normal people would, simply because their dopamine sensitive neurons are altered. Unfortunately for them, heroin also suppresses other parts of the body, among which the system that controls your breathing, that is not altered in the same way as the 'pleasure system' is. Heroin addicts that take too much heroin to feel the effect sometimes stop breathing and die.
The combined effects of the neurons in our brain and cells in the rest of the body together constitute our thoughts and feelings. For instance, receptors in the nose may detect the smell of freshly baked bread, which you possitively associate with, and which makes you hungry. On the other hand, your gastrointestinal tract may signal to your brain that you are currently digesting food, which can suppress your hunger.
TL;DR Neurons in the brain send electric signals to each other. Thinking is made possible by the huge amount of connections between neurons and how they interact. These signals may inhibit or activate other neurons, leading to specific reactions. All the reactions combined determine our feelings and thoughts. | [
"The brain (cerebrum as well as midbrain and hindbrain) consists of a cortex, composed of neuron-bodies constituting gray matter, while internally there is more white matter that form tracts and commissures. Apart from cortical gray matter there is also subcortical gray matter making up a large number of different ... |
what causes so much weight gain during pregnancy? | During pregnancy hormones are being released to increase the fat storage. Especially in the breasts. This is to prepare the mother for taking care of the child. Not only does she have to produce milk for the baby but during times of low food supply there is an additional mouth to feed which lowers the food supply further. So people who gain weight during their pregnancy have had a higher chance of raising their child successfully and the genes have therefore been passed on. | [
"Body mass index prior to pregnancy and weight gain during pregnancy are both linked to high blood pressure in the offspring during adulthood. Mouse models suggest that this is due to high levels of the fetal hormone leptin, which is present in the blood of individuals that are overweight or obese. There is a theor... |
What kind of Hot Peppers did 1780s Americans Eat? | That is going to be very difficult to establish with any degree of detail.
According to [John Smith (1882)](_URL_1_), pepper were very broadly classified as either "pod pepper" or "cayenne pepper"; the former referred to any variety of fresh pepper while the latter was used to dried and ground varieties. Both sweet and hot varieties were available and adopted by Europeans.
Otherwise, only one of the 5 species of pepper domesticated by american natives was widely grown abroad and gave rise to the majority of the varieties grown in the Western world, and that is the highly variable *Capsicum annuum* [Debra Fett (2003)](_URL_0_). As to varieties grown in the US, they seem to have been introduced from Europe instead of directly from Meso America (no matter how counterintuitive that may seem), which might help narrow down the possibilities a bit ([see Heiser and Smith (1953)](_URL_2_)).
TLDR: Although it is not possible to nail down a specific variety, that pepper would have probably have been variety of *C. annuum* of European derivation. | [
"Black pepper was a well-known and widespread, if expensive, seasoning in the Roman Empire. Apicius' \"De re coquinaria\", a third-century cookbook probably based at least partly on one from the first century CE, includes pepper in a majority of its recipes. Edward Gibbon wrote, in \"The History of the Decline and ... |
Is it possible for two atmosphere-sustaining planets to orbit around a centre of gravity outside either planet? | _URL_1_
It's possible.
When could they see each other?
_URL_0_
I imagine sometime after they made telescopes they would have some idea of life- they could see large scale areas that looked like cities. The rumours would be on the level of those of martian canals. Once they reached the industrial revolution the light production of cities would probably make it pretty obvious that there were inhabitants on other planets. | [
"A necessary condition for the existence of a planet in this system are stable zones where the object can remain in orbit for long intervals. For hypothetical planets in a circular orbit around the individual members of this star system, this maximum orbital radius is computed to be 9.5 AU for the primary and 7.1 A... |
Why does it get increasingly harder to swallow as I'm holding breath? | It's due to the fact that the esophagus lies directly behind the trachea with only a small sheet of muscle separating the two cavities. This allows an increase in pressure in your lungs(which would increase pressure in your trachea) to constrict your esophagus. As you hold your breath you are unconsciously increasing the pressure in your lungs.
Try swallowing with just a small breath held vs a large breath. Also try
to force a breath out (while still not exhaling) and swallowing.
Edit: Source- Anatomy and Cell Biology student | [
"Swallowing therefore depends on coordinated interplay between many various muscles, and although the initial part of swallowing is under voluntary control, once the deglutition process is started, it is quite hard to stop it.\n",
"If swallowing problems (dysphagia) occur, they typically present during the second... |
In colors, why does it mean that something is absorbing light and reflect the color - where does the absorbed lighted gone? | The photons (particles of light) that are absorbed disappear, and their energy is transferred to the object that absorbed them, raising that object's energy. | [
"Materials which do not transmit light are called opaque. Many such substances have a chemical composition which includes what are referred to as absorption centers. Many substances are selective in their absorption of white light frequencies. They absorb certain portions of the visible spectrum while reflecting ot... |
I've often heard commenters cautioning against using the now common "nation-state sovereignty Westphalian" concept of nationality. What were other popular ways of defining nationhood in antiquity? | So to answer your question we first need to define how the [1648 Peace of Westphaila](_URL_4_) defined the 'nation-state'. According to [Elizabeth Cobbs-Hoffman](_URL_8_) the biggest thing that Westphalia did to the European Order was dismantle the idea that a nation derived sovereignty from some higher temporal authority, usually idealized as an Emperor. This was a hold over from Roman times and indicative of the role that Roman law played in European politics. The role of the Emperor was carried out by the Pope and the unifying force of the universal Roman Catholic Church. The [Wars of Religion](_URL_9_) removed this unifying force.
As a result, the Nation-State would be supreme, receiving its sovereignty from no outside force. [The Westphalian system had three key tenets](_URL_10_):
> First, states had a fundamental right to self-determination; second, all states were legally equal; and third, no state would violate territorial integrity. *Within* societies...there must be "an authority capable of commanding all the members...and of compelling those who should refuse to obey." But *between* nations, sucha n idea was tyranny. Every sovereign state, to be a state, must "possess an absolute independence."
Now, to answer your actual question.
Today we tend, especially in the United States, to think of "Nation" and "State" as essentially synonymous (probably in the US because "state" has a particular political meaning). This was not always the case. A Nation used to refer to a "people," often in an ethno-linguistic sense but not necessarily, regardless of their political organization. A State was that organization. So, a so-so example: In the 18th century there was a "German Nation" but not a "German State". The theory of the "Nation-State" is that every Nation, in the ethno-linguistic sense, should have its own State, in the political sense. In practice this doesn't always happen with [some](_URL_6_) [very](_URL_0_) [well](_URL_2_) [known](_URL_7_) [examples](_URL_3_). In some cases rulers have self consciously defined themselves as leading the Nation as opposed to the State (for example Napoleon was [Emperor of the French (*Empire des Français*)](_URL_5_) to distinquish himself from from the [King of France (*Roi de France*)](_URL_1_). | [
"Until the past few centuries, the authority to designate a nation as an outcast, or pariah state, was relatively clear, often resting with religious authorities. (E.g., \"the Ottoman Empire for example was regarded as an outcast by European States\" since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 until the nineteenth centu... |
Why do Venus transits happen in "pairs"? | The ratio of the periods of Earth and Venus' orbits is such that every 8 years we're in approximately the same configuration. It's not exact, though, which is why there isn't a Venus transit every 8 years. Then after another 100 years or so, everything lines up just right again. Now if you're looking for a deeper physical reason for why we have this almost-resonance, it seems that it's [just a coincidence.](_URL_0_) | [
"The Venusian orbit is slightly inclined relative to Earth's orbit; thus, when the planet passes between Earth and the Sun, it usually does not cross the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur when the planet's inferior conjunction coincides with its presence in the plane of Earth's orbit. Transits of Venus occur... |
why is everyone obsessed with going to a top college these days? | It's been nothing new. Just it's been more prevalent I guess. It's a good goal to get into a good school. As a junior in high school who has to go though the miserably stressful application process this year, I can tell you that it's very desirable to get into a good school that fits you. It shows everyone and yourself what you are capable of and provides a great education. | [
"The college serves as a preparation centre for students to study at top universities especially abroad due to its international focus. Many of the students will pursue their first degree majoring in Accountancy, Engineering, Medicine, Biotechnology, Applied science, Biomedicine, Architecture, Economy, or Dentistry... |
Why do antique dolls often look so creepy? Did people not experience the uncanny valley in the past? | Well, Ernst Jentsch published *Zur Psychologie des Unheimlichen* in 1906 and Sigmund Freud's *Das Unheimliche* is 1919, and both of them turn to simulacra of human beings as components of their respective understandings of "the uncanny." So while Uncanny Valley itself is a recent coinage, we can rule out the general *concept* as a modern-day invention. (Whatever its proven or unproven actual psychological underpinnings).
However, neither Jentsch nor Freud is talking specifically about dolls in the sense of Bratz or Cabbage Patch Kids. In fact, Jentsch specifically asserts that "A doll which closes and opens its eyes by itself, or a small automatic toy, will cause no notable sensation of [the uncanny]." *(trans. Roy Sellars; [PDF](_URL_2_))*. Instead, what he (and to a lesser extent Freud, who simply stipulates Jentsch's point here) circles as the uncanny in terms of mock-humans is automata--that is, "the life-size machines that perform complicated tasks, blow trumpets, dance and so forth."
For Jentsch, the uncanny lies in the question of whether something/someone is human or a machine. Critically, this can go in either direction--he identifies the jerking, unconscious movements of a person having a tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizure as triggering the sensation of the uncanny in the same way. But his exemplar par excellence, also picked up by Freud, is E.T.A. Hoffmann's short story [*Der Sandmann.*](_URL_0_)
From the beginning, in the protagonist's recounting of his childhood nightmare/fever dream/vision/reality, the story blurs the line between human and doll-automaton. Creeptastic Coppelius, the reified "Sandman" of Nathanael's childhood terror, seizes the boy in his father's room and treats him like an automaton:
> "We will examine the mechanism (*Mechanismus*) of his hands and feet."
> And then he seized me so roughly that my joints cracked, and screwed off my hands and feet, afterwards putting them back again, one after the other. "There's something wrong here," he mumbled. "But now it's as good as ever."
Fast-forwarding in time, Nathanael is engaged to a (genuinely lovely) woman named Clara. However, through the lens of a telescope, he becomes obsessed with another woman named Olimpia--the lens of the telescope being, in a way, artificial/mechanical eyes. Of course the drama of the story is that beautiful, dancing Olimpia, who always responds, "Ah, ah!" is actually an automaton.
And in the story's finale, when Nathanael and Clara have been reconciled, they go sightseeing one day, observing the land around them from a tower. Clara spots an apparently triffid, and Nathanael wants to take a closer look:
> Nathaniel mechanically put his hand into his breast pocket--he found Coppola's telescope, and pointed it to one side.
But before he sees the seemingly-walking shrub, he spots Clara. And his mind flashes back to dancing Olimpia, always through the telescope lens:
> He shrieked out in a piercing tone, "Spin round, wooden doll! Spin round!" Then seizing Clara with immense force, he tried to hurl her down, but with the desperate strength of one battling against death she clutched the railings.
Clara survives! But in his madness over the confusion of living and doll, Nathanael hurtles himself off the steeple. Throughout the story, then, the boundary between human and machine is repeatedly blurred, right into insanity and death.
(Freud thinks the real issue in Hoffmann's story is that eyes are a penis and women don't real, but...you know, *Freud*.)
Scholars of Gothic literature in particular have traced this theme of automata as the creepy uncanny, in an age where they were meant first of all to be a wondrous scientific and mechanical achievement, back to the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment. The idea of the human body as mechanism or machine (an automaton animated by the soul, if you want to be Cartesian about it) runs strongly through the writing of philosophers like La Mettrie. As Hoffmann's story shows, the idea could be inspiring to some, fearsome to others, and most importantly, *both at once*.
The theme of human/machine as horror is so prominent in 18th and 19th century Romantic and Gothic literature that Terry Castle even called her anthology of "greatest hits" academic articles *The Female Thermometer and the Eighteenth-Century Invention of the Uncanny.*
...Of course, Castle is not a medievalist. And just as the medieval Near East, Byzantium, and (somewhat later) western Europe had both literary and practical traditions of awe-inspiring automata, the era's literature reveals a sense of the uncanny surrounding them.
However, as (AskHistorians AMA alumna!) E.R. Truitt points out, the creepy sensation for medieval authors wasn't a question of human and/versus machine. Instead, it was the twilight between life and death. Automata guard tombs, including ones meant to be a direct replication of the deceased; they guard castles populated by spectres. In some stories, automata resembling dead people are employed as a purposeful fraud to pretend the person is still alive.
So the overall point is: what is uncanny to the people of one era might not be to those of another, or it might be equally uncanny but for different reasons.
As to why some people today find antique dolls creepy, I was unable to find any solid research beyond the usual "dolls in horror movies" (fun fact: in the 19th century, it's more often the puppet *masters* who are the bad guys) as well as some info that suggests the phenomenon isn't limited to antique dolls. But this will be quite interesting in light of the above, I think:
In Francis McAndrew and Sara Koehnke's study "On the Nature of Creepiness," ([PDF](_URL_1_)) their respondents rated "collecting something" as the creepiest hobby--provided that something was "*dolls*, insects, reptiles, or body parts such as teeth, bones, or fingernails." McAndrew and Koehnke identify, overall, creepiness as the sensation of ambiguity over whether something is or isn't a threat. The things that people find creepy to collect are, they point out, either things that humans have an instinctive fear of--snakes and spiders--or things that relate to the living/dead boundary--pulled teeth, clipped fingernails, or outright bones.
Or dolls.
Our sense of the uncanny, it seems, has more traces of the medieval than one might expect from this side of industrialization and the microchip.
| [
"Many modern horror icons originate from the 1970s. Leatherface from \"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre\" went on to become a horror icon. The Phantom from \"The Town That Dreaded Sundown\" became an influential on some antagonist in many other horror films with the sack mask he wears. The same type of mask was used on... |
what laws (international presumably) if any has russia broken in invading crimea? | It is against the rules of the United Nations for any member country to invade the territory of another unless the Security Council has explicitly permitted such an action. That's one of the reasons that the 2002 allied invasion of Iraq was controversial -- depending on which legal interpretation you preferred it was by no means certain that the Security Council had permitted an invasion.
In the case of Russia and Ukraine it's far more clear-cut -- the Security Council has not agreed to any action by Russia in that respect.
The big problem with enforcing international law is that there is no recognised global police force. Even if a country has obviously broken the rules, unless other countries are prepared to take action (economic, political, or military) there are few if any repercussions. | [
"When the International Criminal Court (ICC) started to investigate Russia's annexation of Crimea for possible violations of international law, Russia abruptly withdrew its membership on 16 November 2016. Nonetheless, in its preliminary 2017 report, the ICC found that \"the situation within the territory of Crimea ... |
can one live off distilled water? will there be any side effects? | No. There are no nutrients in water and you will die a lingering death of starvation. Now eat your dinner. | [
"The drinking of purified water as a replacement of drinking water has been both advocated and discouraged for health reasons. Purified water lacks minerals and ions such as calcium that play key roles in biological functions, such as in nervous system homeostasis, and are normally found in potable water. The lack ... |
If slow-motion cameras exist, is there such thing as a slow-motion microphone? | Sound is recorded very differently from how images are recorded. Unlike a single image which has to specify the hue of every single pixel on a monitor, a sound file can only specify one piece of information, namely how far in or out the speaker cone is.
Sound has to be stored at a *much* higher rate than images because of the nature of how we hear sound. The highest frequency you will be able to encode on a digital recording is about half the sampling rate, this is the [Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem](_URL_0_); some humans can hear 20kHz so we want to go at least twice that.
CDs have a sampling rate of 44,100 "frames" per second, but each "frame" is only 16 bits per channel (which is still enough to specify 2^(16) = 65,536 different values). So for each single frame of a 24 fps video, the audio track has gone through nearly 2000 "frames" i.e. samples.
The nature of how sound works means that if you slow down the recording, the pitch will come out lower. Lots of pitch-correction software can change the speed or the pitch of a recording independently, but that's not a "real" sound recording; it's what a clever algorithm has computed to give you the impression.
A "slow-motion" sound recording apparatus would be something which records with a high enough sampling rate that when it's slowed down, its sampling rate is still over 44 kHz, so you could hear the ultrasound. Apparently a lot of modern equipment can sample at 192kHz, so that would be able to reproduce ultrasound at 96 kHz, which would be what you need to accurately record the high frequencies of a 120 fps video played at 24 fps.
A "real" slow motion video would actually have all the visible colours red-shifted into the deep infrared, and we would see the ultraviolet frequencies instead. But because human vision, unlike hearing, can be described by giving the intensities of only 3 primary colours per pixel, and these are all that we record, it's easy to keep the colours fixed while changing the playback speed.
For sound recording, however, we need the whole audible spectrum from just over 10 Hz up to 20 kHz to reproduce the things we hear. There's no sensible way to split sound into a small number of "primary frequencies" which we hold fixed, like with vision, which is why it's a lot trickier. | [
"There are two ways in which slow motion can be achieved in modern cinematography. Both involve a camera and a projector. A projector refers to a classical film projector in a movie theater, but the same basic rules apply to a television screen and any other device that displays consecutive images at a constant fra... |
why do windows reflect better when it's dark outside? | They don't actually reflect better. The difference is that there is far less light coming from outside so you can see the reflected light from inside more easily. It is the same sort of idea behind how you can see stars at night but not during the day; they don't stop shining, there is just other light overpowering them. | [
"Glass coated with a low-emissivity substance can reflect radiant infrared energy, encouraging radiant heat to remain on the same side of the glass from which it originated, while letting visible light pass. This often results in more efficient windows because radiant heat originating from indoors in winter is refl... |
why are policy makers obsessed with economic growth? what about in countries where population has naturally plateaued or is in decline? why is it reasonable to expect growth ad infinitum? | Because of technological and other advancements in development. Economic growth means improvement in our standard of living.
25 years ago, few middle-class families had cell phones or internet. 50 years ago, many didn't have air conditioning or a clothes dryer. 80 years ago, you might not have had a washing machine, a refrigerator, or a car.
Today, that family spends thousands of dollars a year on such things. That money doesn't just come from thin air, it is the result of economic growth that makes people more wealthy than they were in the past. | [
"Further, even in countries which have both large population growth and major ecological problems, it is not necessarily true that curbing the population growth will make a major contribution towards resolving all environmental problems. However, as developing countries with high populations become more industriali... |
How does continental drift affect property boundaries? | That's an interesting question. The only way I can imagine it working is based on acerage. | [
"In 1912 Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of Continental Drift. This theory suggests that the shapes of continents and matching coastline geology between some continents indicates they were joined together in the past and formed a single landmass known as Pangaea; thereafter they separated and drifted like rafts ... |
Someone posted asking the maximum gravity humans could survive on; other end of the scale, what is the lowest gravity with which we could survive? | The answer is zero G.
The astronauts routinely experience zero, or near-zero G. There are some long term health effects on things such as bone growth, etc.
Consider, for example, the ISS:
> The effective gravity inside the ISS is very close to zero, because the station is in free fall. The effective gravity is a combination of gravity and acceleration.
Note that the ISS always corrects it's position to counteract the free-fall due to earths gravity - which is why the astronauts are in a near-zero G situation. | [
"BULLET::::- Some microbes can survive gravity more than 400,000 times that felt on Earth, a new study says. By contrast, most humans can tolerate three to five times Earth's surface gravity before losing consciousness. (\"National Geographic\")\n",
"It is not yet known whether exposure to high gravity for short ... |
Did people in Britain in the 1960s & early 1970s (before Margaret Thatcher became PM in 1975) believe that unions were too powerful? | I was fairly young at the time, but I remember people being pretty hacked off with the miners in respect of the [three day week](_URL_0_). My father went so far as to fit mains gas lighting in the kitchen of our house as he had no confidence that the issues with the supply of electricity would be resolved. | [
"Margaret Thatcher hated the influence of trade unions on government: as Secretary of State for Education and Science in Sir Edward Heath's 1970–1974 administration, she had seen the unions bring down the Heath government, which made her determined to curtail their power for all successive governments. When the gov... |
"actual unemployment" in the us vs. the unemployment numbers released by the government each month | In the U.S. George W. Bush had the unemployment calculations changed. Now, instead of looking at who is really unemployed (a bit difficult to do), only those people who are actively drawing unemployment funds are counted. So, the numbers get skewed in the "less than reality" direction. Example: I lose my job and go on unemployment. I am now counted as unemployed. Several months later I run out of unemployment funds, yet still have no job. Because I'm not drawing off of unemployment funds, I'm not counted as unemployed. To the government it looks like I got a job, and they report a decrease in the unemployment rate. In reality, I'm not working, I'm homeless, and the unemployment rate is unchanged. | [
"Williams points out that under President Lyndon B. Johnson, the U-3 unemployment rate series was created, which excludes people who stopped looking for work for more than a year ago as well as part-time workers who are seeking full-time employment. Although the old unemployment rate series', which include part-tim... |
Does the human eye have differing depth of field with pupil/aperture size due to light? | Yes. In fact, this is why, historically, many older (as in > 30) people couldn't read well in dim lighting. Depth-of-field effects are significant: the interior size of your eye is about 20mm, and the pupil can be up to 8mm, for an f ratio of f/2.5. In sunlight the pupil can drop to ~1.5 mm, or about f/13, which extends the depth of field significantly.
LemonFrosted is right that these effects aren't a big deal for everyday distance vision in healthy eyes, since a subject even a few of meters away is essentially at infinity, so everything from a few meters out to the horizon should be in focus at the same time -- but they *are* a big deal for near vision, back-and-forthing (e.g. from your car's dashboard to an out-the-window view), or eyes that are myopic or astigmatic. If your eye can't focus light properly (the norm, since after all it's a camera made out of, essentially, jello), then increasing depth-of-field will improve acuity.
When I got LASIK I was amazed that my acuity, pretty good during the day, actually *improved* to insane razor-sharp levels in faint light, a good indication that (at least for a while) my visual acuity was close to the faint light diffraction limit. (That was a few years ago, and my vision has decayed into the "normal" range now.)
| [
"The widely accepted explanation of the apparent depth is that a reduction in retinal illumination (relative to the fellow eye) yields a corresponding delay in signal transmission, imparting instantaneous spatial disparity in moving objects. This seems to occur because visual system latencies are generally shorter ... |
Is it possible to create superconductor batteries? | [Pretty much exactly yes](_URL_0_).
A major limitation is that superconductors are not very strong and the enormous magnetic field is trying to crush your system to a point. Superconductors are also not free and need to be cooled to extremely low temperatures to work. Nevertheless, superconducting magnetic energy storage is extremely efficient and switches on much faster than most other batteries - they're used a lot as buffers where you need a very stable supply of electricity. | [
"In superconductors, charge can flow without any resistance. It is possible to make pieces of superconductor with a large built-in persistent current, either by creating the superconducting state (cooling the material) while charge is flowing through it, or by changing the magnetic field around the superconductor a... |
The halting problem as applied to the much sought after "theory of everything" | Just because the universe ends doesn't mean that some non-halting process has halted. It means that the process has been terminated, but not in a state such that the process is complete. Therefore the statement "therefore P will be able to tell whether any evolving state would halt" is false.
If you're writing a letter and suddenly the paper catches fire, you weren't done with the letter, but there is no letter left to be finished. Similarly, if the world ends, a process wasn't necessarily halted, but it can no longer go on.
Now then, there may very well be no such P, but this application of the halting problem isn't the reason why. | [
"Halting State is a novel by Charles Stross, published in the United States on 2 October 2007 and in the United Kingdom in January 2008. Stross has said that it is \"a thriller set in the software houses that write multiplayer games\". The plot centres on a bank robbery in a virtual world. It features speculative t... |
The US has a long history of interfering in the democratic processes/politics of other countries through military intervention, assassination, and aid. Are there any examples where other countries have done similar things to the US? | In addition to my comment on the question itself, I have an answer that dates to the beginning of the modern international system (or just before, if we take the Peace of Westphalia as our starting point).
During the 30 Years War, England supported the cause of the Elector Palatine against the Holy Roman Emperor in a phase of the conflict that centered on the invitation of the Elector to take the throne of Bohemia, over the protests of the Hapsburg monarchy. During the second phase of the war, France and Sweden both intervened under the pretext of defending "German liberties," inserting themselves into Imperial politics (and advancing their territorial claims) by military means.
The famous Spanish Armada offers an even earlier example; to use the language of the Cold War heyday for American interventions, the Catholic Spanish wanted to impose a client regime over England, thereby replacing the ideologically rival Anglican-Protestant monarchy. In less anachronistic terms, the Spanish saw Elizabeth I as an illegitimate usurper of Queen Mary I of England (also the wife of Phillip II of Spain). Ironically, the invasion was not only ideologically motivated (and, in turn, endorsed morally and economically by the Papacy... another case of intervention) but strategical impelled by English aid to the rebellious Spanish Netherlands.
As I write this, I realize that one could go much further by following the thread of Papal interventions throughout European history and, for that matter, interventions against the Papal State and/or the Catholic hierarchy (often to secure the election of a preferred candidate to the Holy See). A few examples...
Papal condemnation of the Cathar Heresy and theological endorsement of a Frankish invasion of Languedoc during the Albigensian Crusade.
Papal economic support for the restoration of the Medici as masters of Florence.
Papal negotiations with Francis I of France and Charles V of the HRE over the suzerainty of Naples (i.e. negotiating the foreign policy status of an outside polity with two third parties)
Sources: Peter H. Wilson, "The Thirty Years War: Europe's Tragedy"
Lauro Martines, "Furies: War in Europe, 1450-1700"
R.J. Knecht, "Francis I"
Strayer, "The Albigensian Crusade"
TL:DR If you'll pardon this Early Modernist's digressions, you'll find that intervention in the politics of other polities (countries, if you prefer) is neither a recent development nor unique to the US. Other commenters might offer insight into even earlier cases. | [
"In United States history, critics have charged that presidents have used democracy to justify military intervention abroad. Critics have also charged that the U.S. helped local militaries overthrow democratically elected governments in Iran, Guatemala, and in other instances. Studies have been devoted to the histo... |
How was Ansalem's Ontological Argument received at the time? | Anselm’s literary corpus has had a great deal of influence over the centuries. This is particularly evident in two fields: Christian theology and the philosophy of religion. As far as the former is concerned, Anselm’s corpus, especially *Why God Became Man*, has shaped the way many Christians understand the incarnation and soteriology.
Whether Christians have accepted or rejected the claims Anselm makes in this work, they are rarely ignored. Anselm’s corpus has also had an influence in the philosophy of religion. This influence stems largely from an argument he made for the existence of God in his *Proslogion*. This argument has become known as the “ontological argument for the existence of God,” and it is probably for this that Anselm is most well known today.
A basic formulation of the argument is that if nothing greater than God can be thought of and if existence is greater than non-existence, then God must, by definition, exist. Philosophers of religion have discussed this argument through the centuries, even to the present day.
Anselm was no stranger to controversy. After the publication of his *Proslogion*, a monk named Gaunilo (of the Marmoutier abbey in north-east France) challenged the validity of the argument (though not the conclusion). Anselm happily responded to this challenge and insisted that Gaunilo’s criticisms and his responses be circulated with the text. In another incident a fellow scholar named Roscelin misrepresented Anselm’s views on the doctrine of the Trinity; Anselm responded with a restatement and clarification of his actual views.
Peter Abelard, another relatively early critic, claimed that if the problem that the atonement was intended to address was that humanity had violated God’s honour by disobedience and therefore a satisfaction to God’s honour was needed, then God could simply forgive the disobedience without satisfaction. Anselm had anticipated this argument before Abelard made it. For Anselm, if God simply forgave disobedience without any sort of satisfaction or punishment, then disobedience would be outside the law or, as Anselm himself puts it, “Therefore sinfulness is in a position of greater freedom, if it is forgiven through mercy alone, than righteousness – and this seems extremely unfitting.” The notion of unpunished sin violates Anselm’s view of God and the universe that he created.
Abelard’s counter proposal that Christ’s life, teachings, and death provide an example of perfect love for humanity to follow would have been unconvincing to Anselm, who it seems likely would have suggested that Christ must be more than just an example for humanity to follow because humanity stands in a fundamental debt to God for dishonouring him by disobedience.
This situation must be made right by either punishment or satisfaction. It is improbable, then, that Anselm would have altered his original argument in light of Abelard’s criticisms.
Main source:
Anselm of Canterbury, "Why God Became Man" in *Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works*, ed. Brian Davies and G.R. Evans, Oxford World’s Classics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 284.
| [
"Since its proposal, few philosophical ideas have generated as much interest and discussion as the ontological argument. Nearly all of the great minds of Western philosophy have found the argument worthy of their attention, and a number of criticisms and objections have been mounted. The first critic of the ontolog... |
Anyone know of any good sources written about Mexican identity given their convoluted historical identity as a people? | I'm not familiar with Sons of La Malinche, but you might be interested in reading about the *indigenismo*, a cultural-intelectual movement that took hold in Mexico in the 20s and 30s, especially under president Lazaro Cardenas, and dealt with the shaping of a post-revolutionary Mexican identity common for Whites and Indians.
Some notable names include Manuel Gamio (especially a work called Forjando Patria), Andrés Molina Enríquez, José Vasconcelos (Especially his work, La Raza Cosmica) and Moisés Sáenz.
The same period also saw the rise of the art of the murals, which were the visually artistic side of the Indijenismo. Look for the works of Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. | [
"Historically, racial and ethnic classification has been closely related with Mexico's society. However, since the end of the Mexican Revolution, the official identity promoted by the government for non-indigenous Mexicans has been the Mestizo one (a mix of European and indigenous culture and heritage). Installed w... |
eli 5 how do us citizens serve in foreign militaries without losing there citizenship? | According to the [US State Department](_URL_0_),
> Military service in foreign countries, however, usually does not cause loss of nationality since an intention to relinquish nationality normally is lacking. In adjudicating loss of nationality cases, the Department has established an administrative presumption that a person serving in the armed forces of a foreign state not engaged in hostilities against the United States does not have the intention to relinquish nationality. | [
"Sometimes, the government awarded non-citizen immigrants who died fighting for American forces with the posthumous title of U.S. citizen, but this is not considered honorary citizenship. In June 2003, Congress approved legislation to help families of fallen non-citizen soldiers.\n",
" provides for relinquishment... |
why do weather forecasts have an absolute temperature and a "feels like" temperature? | I have never experienced this before, but I suspect they are factoring in wind chill. Humans sweat and experience evaporative cooling which is higher when there is wind. Thermometers.don't experience wind chill, so they adjust for it in their reporting. | [
"Surface temperature differences in turn cause pressure differences. Higher altitudes are cooler than lower altitudes due to differences in compressional heating. Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a future time and a given location. The atmos... |
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