question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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why has japan averaged one prime minister a year for nearly 20 years? | Several reasons:
1. Prime Ministers are expected to resign when the polls are going down, they are not expected to serve their full term. Any damage to the poll could be a reason for resigning (including [wearing an outdated shirt](_URL_0_).
2. Unlike the benefits that come with being the head of government in many other countries, being the Japanese Prime Minister is a difficult job with low salary and high stress, being defiant is not worth it.
3. Prime Ministers have very little political power, so changing prime ministers is unlikely to cause unstability.
| [
"This is a list of Japanese prime ministers by longevity. It consists of Prime Ministers and Interim Prime Ministers of Japan who have held the office. If a prime minister served more than one non-consecutive term, the dates given are for the beginning of their first term, and the end of their last term. \n",
"Th... |
When you break something apart and then push it back together, why don't the intermolecular forces that were holding it together before re-attract? | I would assume it would mostly be due to the air that now occupies the space where the broken material used to be intact. If you could somehow realign the electrons (or move them out of the way in the case of a metal) I can see no reason for the atoms to interact as though nothing had happened. But when the object breaks, new bonds are formed at the surface. A bit like surface tension but in a solid and without the cohesion if that analogy makes sense. | [
"At the atomic level, when atoms or molecules are pulled apart from each other and gain potential energy with a restoring force still existing, the restoring force might create what is also called tension. Each end of a string or rod under such tension could pull on the object it is attached to, in order to restore... |
explain star wars to me. (episodes 1-6) | They are movies. You don't want them explained, you want to watch them. But watch them in the order they were made, 4 5 6 1 2 3
| [
"Described by executive producer Raymond Thompson as \"\"Star Wars\" on the planet Earth\", this is a fantasy saga of bravery, magic, myth and romance. William Tell is the youthful leader of a band of young, ‘brat pack' outlaws, forever hunted by the forces of darkness, led by Xax and Kreel, who have usurped power ... |
How much damage does carbon-14 decay have on a person's DNA during a lifetime? | Let' do a calculation:
[Human DNA contains about 3 billion base pairs](_URL_0_)
Each base pair contains 19-20 carbon atoms.
= > 60 billion carbon atoms
But C-14 is only abundant with [one part per trillion](_URL_1_).
So only on cell in 17 is expected to contain a single C-14 atom in its DNA.
The half-life of C-14 is 5730 years, so the probability for one c-14 to decay 115 years(chose that as upper bound for human lifetime) is 1-exp(-115/5730) =0.02
So in 850 cells only one C-14 would decay within the DNA in a humans lifetime.
That's not a problem for DNA repair mechanisms.
I am not so sound in biological terms so I would have to speculate, how an other Nitrogen atom would affect the DNA. | [
"DNA damage, due to environmental factors and normal metabolic processes inside the cell, occurs at a rate of 10,000 to 1,000,000 molecular lesions per cell per day. While this constitutes only 0.000165% of the human genome's approximately 6 billion bases (3 billion base pairs), unrepaired lesions in critical genes... |
why does chicken taste completely different after it's been in the fridge? | It dries out, the fridge is a very dry environment. The drying out changes the texture but also the flavour. | [
"As an explanation of why unusual meats would taste more like chicken than common alternatives such as beef or pork, different possibilities have been offered. One idea is that chicken is seen as having a bland taste compared to other meats because fat contributes more flavor than muscle (especially in the case of ... |
Why does "hot" (or "spicy") take a while to be felt? | The nerves that carry hot, spicy, pain etc, transmit signals very slowly, sometimes less than a 1m/sec. They're called C fibers, which are sparse and "wires" are uninsulated, so whatever signal leaks out of the neurons pretty quickly.
Contrast this with nerves that sense the position of your arms and legs, they are much stronger signals and travel at about 100m/s. | [
"It is anecdotally said that hot peppers help people in the tropics “cool off.” This theory is consistent with the peripheral vasodilatory effect of capsaicin that has been shown to lower skin temperature in humans exposed to a hot environment. Capsaicin feels hot in the mouth because it activates sensory receptors... |
What's the furthest a satellite sent from Earth has one out into the Universe without getting lost/broken? | The furthest so far is [Voyager 1](_URL_0_) sent out 35 years ago, it is nearly at the edge of our solar system. It would take *73,775 years* for it to reach the nearest star. | [
"American satellite X-117, carrying a chimpanzee, has unexpectedly fallen back to earth after entering a non-existent/fictional part of the stratosphere known as \"the flame barrier\", which encircles the earth at an altitude of 200 miles. Howard Dahlman (Dan Gachman), a rich businessman and ardent amateur space pr... |
Third Reich & World War II Historians, what can you tell me about my grandfather? | I'm trying my best on translating the writing.
The first one (picture 3) reads:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ ??? ]17.Juni 1937 von Lydia + Paul Jarinus (Jatins? Jorins?)
Papa Paul Helmchen mit
12.12.[18]88 Paul
14.1.1916
Walter 7.9.1912
_________________________________________________
This was apparently send as a postcard from or to Lydia and Paul(or somethig completly unreletad, I really cant read the first word). Pictured are Paul Helmchen sr. in the middle and (I presume) his sons Paul jr. to the right and Walter to the left with their birthdates marked under their names.
The second one (picture 6) reads:
__________________________________________________________
Juni 1937
Walter + Hilde Schulz-Helmchen geb. (short for "geboren"; ger. for "née") Reuter
______________
This just remarks that Walter (your grandfather I presume) got married to Hilde Reuter in June 1937.
The uniforms he's wearing seems to be the [standard dress uniform](_URL_0_) of the Wehrmacht and the [sword he's wearing points to him beeing a officer or NCO](_URL_1_), but I can't make out his actual rank in the photo.
EDIT: Got a date wrong. | [
"Walther Gustav Reinhardt (24 March 1872 in Stuttgart – 8 August 1930 in Berlin) was a German officer who served as the last Prussian Minister of War and the first head of the army command (\"Chef der Heeresleitung\") within the newly created Ministry of the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic. During the Kapp Putsch... |
how does a throwing knife or tomahawk always manage to land blade first and not the handle? | The simple answer is that they don't.
Thrown weapons are designed to give you the best chance to hit with the blade, but it takes a lot of practice and even then it isn't a sure thing.
People who throw knives or axes at fairs and circuses and such are entertainers working in more or less the same conditions every time. With lots of practice they can get good enough throwing *a specific weapon at a specific range into a specific target* that they can land the shot most of the time.
In TV and movies they're straight up cheating. They have as many tries as they need to get the shot right, or they use special effects. You only see the end result, which makes it look like thrown weapons are extremely accurate and deadly in the hands of a skilled user, when the reality is it's more of a toss-up.
The only exceptions would be weapons like throwing stars, which are designed to be sharp from every angle. Even then, they were hardly ever used as a primary killing weapon. They would instead be thrown as a distraction, or stuck in the ground in the hopes an enemy would step on them. But they were rarely, if ever, thrown at an enemy with the intent to land a killing blow.
While I'm sure there were a handful of people throughout history that got extremely good at throwing sharp things and used this skill in combat, for most people throwing a knife or axe in a fight just meant you were throwing your weapon away. | [
"Sometimes how the knife is thrown varies starting with the knife's tip on a player's body part (elbow, wrist, shoulder, etc). The knife's handle is pushed so it rotates end over end to stick into the ground at the point. This version of the game is shown in part one of the television miniseries \"Lonesome Dove\" b... |
If I were a Roman emperor after Octavian but before Marcus Aurelius, how much power would I actually have? | The principate wasn't really an institution like monarchies in China or medieval Europe, it was rather dependent on the personal authority of the emperor. This is why, for example, you don't really have regents or boy emperors until very late in Roman history because while dynastic ties were very important, what ultimately justified the power the emperor wielded was the power itself. His own authority was in a sense self confirming. Which isn't to say that the Romans did not criticize those with power, they did and it could be blistering, but it wasn't really done within an institutional framework. Caligula wasn't a bad emperor because he failed to live up to Augustus, or because he did not act as a rightly ordained monarch, or because he tarnished the institution, but rather because he was a bad person. This may sound rational and egalitarian, but in effect it means that the Principate did not have the sort of institutional controls a more tightly defined monarchy would have, and emperors had much more latitude to impose their own personality on governance.
Which isn't to say the emperors were absolute, far from it. They still needed to deal with subordinates and the people at large, and didn't have the sort of dynastic aura that would prevent them from getting stabbed. | [
"On 13 January 27 BC, Octavian gave up his extraordinary powers, including his proconsular imperium, triumvirate authority, and powers granted in the \"consensus universorum\", back to the Senate and people of Rome. However, he kept the Senate's grant of tribunician power in 36 BC and remained consul for 27 BC. He ... |
what is the difference in my body when i'm sleeping compared to just laying down in bed with my eyes closed for the same amount of time? | Genuine ELI5: Sleep is your brain cleaning itself.. You cant wash clothes while your wearing them, and your brain cant clean while it's on. | [
"Sleeping in the supine position is believed to make the sleeper more vulnerable to episodes of sleep paralysis because in this sleeping position it is possible for the soft palate to collapse and obstruct the airway. This is a possibility regardless of whether the individual has been diagnosed with sleep apnea or ... |
How reliable is Nature as a publisher of peer-reviewed material? | Nature is the best. Along with science, it's the most reliable journal out there. | [
"The \"quality\" being referred to here is the scientific one, which consists of transparency and repeatability of the research for independent verification, the validity of the conclusions and interpretations drawn from the reported data, overall importance for advance within a given field of knowledge, novelty, a... |
why are books better than other forms of media? | It stems from the fact that studies have shown that reading a book increases cognitive abilities where as watching the television does not do this. There are a lot of studies out there which show that brain activity is far greater when reading a book than when you are watching TV.
As far as doing all your reading on the internet, I would venture to say that it's in between reading a book and watching television, but that's total speculation. And as far as video games go, there are studies to show that video games actually do help develop problem solving skills and fine motor skills in young children, but traditionalists will never say so.
Sources:
_URL_3_
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
_URL_2_
_URL_4_ | [
"Contemporary publishing tend to place highest value on works that sell to broad markets. Quick turnover, high-visibility marketing campaigns for bestsellers, and corporate \"superstore\" bookstores have all made it less common for unique and older texts to be published. Geoffrey Sauer has argued that the costs thi... |
How long could you survive at absolute zero temperature? (−273.15°C or −459.67°F) | It's all in the rate of heat transfer. The vacuum of space (not near a star) is incredibly cold, but heat transfer only occurs through phase changes and radiation which would take some hours to kill you (assuming you had a pressure suit and air, but not proper insulation or HVAC). However, if we had a medium, like liquid helium with convective and conductive transfer at play you'd die very quickly within seconds. | [
"From January 23, 1916, to January 24, 1916, the temperature fell 100 °F (56 °C) from 44 °F (7 °C) to -56 °F (-49 °C). This is the United States' and also the world record for the greatest temperature drop in 24 hours.\n",
"Values of this order for the absolute zero were not, however, universally accepted about t... |
why do the elderly often drive on the slower side? | Fear and reduced vision and reaction time. | [
"Because giving up driving is viewed by the elderly as a loss of their independence, many may be reluctant to seek out alternative forms of transportation when they are no longer able to drive. The best way for transit providers to meet the transportation needs of most older Americans is to meet the transportation ... |
if a colorblind person is colorblind from birth, how does it handicap them at all? | They are handicapped by lacking the ability to distinguish different colors. Red looks like they know red to be, but it might also look like green. | [
"Colorblindness refers to the idea that racial differences are unimportant in modern society. Bobo suggests that people who are colorblind claim they don’t acknowledge, or care about, racial differences in people — although those who claim to be colorblind often express extreme color-consciousness when it comes to ... |
why was napoleon accepted back open arms from the french after his return from exile in elba? | Napoleon managed to evade his guard and land in France in 1815 at which point he was greeted with open arms. Constables sent to arrest him instead declared their loyalty to him. The main factor in Napoleon being accepted happily was distaste with the current king and the fact that France was being ill-treated and divided up by the European powers. His charisma and promise to create a liberal society and create reforms also was helpful in people falling behind him.
I'm sorry but that is from the top of my head and some of it might me a little swayed or partly false. | [
"After eleven months of exile on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, Napoleon escaped and returned to France, where he was greeted with huge enthusiasm. Louis XVIII fled Paris, but the one thing that would have given the emperor mass support, a return to the revolutionary extremism of 1793-1794, was out of the... |
Do the clocks on the Mars rovers tick faster than the clocks on Earth? | Technically correct, in that the Rover clock is traveling at a different velocity than the Earthbound clocks, which does affect the relevant times. However, the effect is so small as to be negligible at the relative velocities of the Rover and Earth. | [
"An alternative idea was suggested in 1988 by David Powell (the Davidian Mars calendar). In this case the clocks simply run slower than the ones on Earth so that their hour hands complete two cycles per one Sol. For example, 1 Mars-second is 1.027 Earth-seconds, 1 Mars-minute is 61.62 Earth-seconds, and 1 Mars-hour... |
Why do dogs smell bad when wet? | Dogs have a variety of microorganisms, such as bacteria and yeast, that live in their skin and produce [a large number of volatile organic compounds](_URL_0_) that have an intrinsic distinctive smell (i.e. which act as odorants). In this sense the "wet dog smell" is always there. What changes when dogs become wet is that the water can dissolve many of these compounds, which may have been trapped in various solids. Once the water evaporates, the surface area from which these volatile odorants can evaporate becomes much larger, which increases their concentration in the surrounding air, effectively amplifying the odor. | [
"Dogs, as with all mammals, have natural odors. Natural dog odor can be unpleasant to dog owners especially when dogs are kept inside the home, as some people are not used to being exposed to the natural odor of a non-human species living in proximity to them. Dogs may also develop unnatural odors as a result of sk... |
When did people stop using cannons that shot cannon balls and how did they get upgraded over time and turn into a howitzer? | To clear up a few terms. A "cannon" or "gun" is an artillery piece with a long(er) barrel that fires a projectile over a flatter trajectory. A "howitzer" is an artillery piece with a short(er) barrel that lobs its shells in a more arching trajectory - usually in an arc higher than a cannon, but lower than than a mortar.
For much of the black powder era, howitzers were generally the only field artillery pieces that fired exploding shells. There are also "gun-howitzers," which have qualities of both weapons (often have mid-length barrels, are able to fire multiple trajectories, fire solid and exploding shot), but are generally just called "howitzers" in common parlance.
Modern armies tend to use howitzers and gun-howitzers (ex. M777) today, although flatter-firing field guns like the 155 mm Gun M1 "Long Tom" were widely used up into WWII.
_URL_2_ - an 18th century Russian field howitzer.
_URL_0_ - a replica of a 19th century 12-pounder Napoleon field gun.
Howitzers, cannons/guns, and mortars have all coexisted since the early 17th century. Mortars and cannons long predated the howitzer, the youngest of the three weapons - short barrelled cannons appear in the early 1400s, but it isn't until the early 1600s that the howitzer starts reaching its more traditional form as a indirect fire weapon.
For most of the 18th and the first half of 19th century, artillery changes fairly little. The basic idea is simple. Field guns fire roundshot, canister (or case) shot, and grapshot. Mortars and howitzers fire exploding shells or solid shot.
During the age of Gunpowder Empires - there were two families of artillery that are of interest to us: field pieces and siege pieces. Field pieces (usually cannons and howitzers) were lighter, more portable guns that could be pulled by horses into battle. Siege pieces (mortars, heavy howitzers, and heavy cannons) were heavier, slower weapons that often had to be moved by large teams of oxen - they'd be brought up to reduce heavy enemy fortifications. There's also coastal artillery, which tend to more closely resemble naval guns.
The basic design of artillery becomes more refined and standardised during this period. In 1765, France adopts the Gribeauval system, which standardises the sizes and design of French guns. In 1803, Napoleon's Year XI system streamlines French artillery further - now France has 6-, 12-, 24-pounder field guns and 5½-inch field howitzer. French guns and howitzers become lighter and long-range with the introduction of the Valée system in 1828. The French, especially under ex-artilleryman Napoleon, become well-known for their effective use of artillery, so French designs are widely imitated and influence the guns of other nations.
The first step towards our modern aritllery is the the **canon obusier** ("shell cannon") and **exploding artillery shells,** the first widely-used shell-firing field pieces. Exploding artillery shells go back to early 14th century China and Europe. For a variety of reasons, exploding shells are primarily used by siege artillery, rather than by field artillery.
There are of course, exceptions. The British, for example, had made use of Henry Shrapnel's "spherical case shot" (exploding shells packed with gunpowder and metal balls) during the Napoleonic Wars. E.M. Boxer's refinements to shrapnel shells in the 1850s helped cement the shrapnel shell as a key weapon for the Royal Artillery. The introduction of shell-firing Paixhans guns in the French navy in 1842 further popularized the use of exploding shells. Around 1853, France developed several guns like the *Canon obusier de 12,* a smooth-bore cannon that can fire exploding shells, solid shot, or canister shot. These exploding shells used timed fuses - the gunner cut the fuse to a set length and screwed it into the shell. When the gun fired, it would light the fuse and then the shell would explode at the desired distance. The British Boxe Fuse of the 1850s is an especially good example of this technology.
For obvious reasons, these weapons were extremely influential. The U.S. Army, for example, adopted a version of the gun as the Model 1857. The "Napoleon gun*" was widely used on both sides of the American Civil War, alongside various other cannons and howitzers. Nearly 35% of Union guns at Gettybsurg were Napoleons (142 guns).
*named after French Emepror Napoleon III, who had been a booster of the French gun's development.
Another important development in this period was the **rifled gun.** Thanks to improved industrial techniques, large-scale production of rifled weapons became more feasible by the 1850s and 1860s. Much like a rifled firearm, rifled aritllery pieces had better range and greater accuracy. This allowed rifled guns to stay at a safer distance from their targets. It also allowed for much more effective counter-battery fire, allowing gunners with rifled artillery to destroy enemy guns and then shell the battlefield at their leisure. During the American Civil War, rifled guns like the 3-inch Ordnance Rifle Model 1861 were often used in the counter-battery role, in addition to their other uses. At Gettybsurg in 1863, the Union army alone had 150 were Ordnance Rifles, with the Confederates having about 75 of their own. Some old smoothbore guns are later drilled out to have rifling.
The development of the **breech-loading gun** also modernizes artillery in this period. For example, by 1855, William Armstrong was building his namesake breech-loading rifled guns. Other designers were concocting their own systems. By the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-1871, rifled breach-loading guns were becoming the norm in most Western armies. The performance of rapid-firing, long-range, accurate Prussian artillery in the Franco-Prussian war is a particular shock to the French, who go on to heavily invest in better guns of their own (more on this later). Breech-loading guns have some drawbacks (weaker and sometimes prone to bursting, more expensive), so they aren't universally-adopted in by the 1870s. However, they can fire much more quickly, an advantage that appeals to many armies of the era. By the 1890s, nearly every modern military is using breech-loading artillery. There is a hitch, though - the gun still recoils back like any other cannon, and the gunners still have to do the hard work of muscling the gun back into place after every shot.
More and more **"quick-firing"** guns also start to appear. The development of breech-loading guns with integrated ammunition (shells and propellant combined into one unti, much like a rifle cartridge) enables the development of a rapid-firing gun. Initially used chiefly as anti-torpedo boat guns on warships, quick-firing guns also gain a following on land.
The mid- to late-18th century development of modern **propellants** and **high explosives,** like nitrocellulosenbased smokeless powder and cordite made guns long-ranged, more accurate, less destructive, and safer to use. Without clouds of gunsmoke, gunners could see their targets better and fire without instantly giving up their position.
With the development of the **hydro-pneumatic recoil system,** we start to see the first recognizably modern artillery. This system adsorbed the recoil of the gun and allowed it to stay in place. Instead of firing, moving the gun back into position, loading and firing, gunners can now fire, load, and fire - they don't have to constantly re-lay the gun. This makes rates of fire much higher and accuracy much better. The French *Canon de 75 mm Modele 1897,* the famous "French 75" is the first quick-firing field gun to combine a hydro-pneumatic recoil system, breech-loading, and self-contained ammunition.
The French 75 is quickly met with other, similar guns like the German *7.7 cm Feldkanone 96 neuer Art* and the British Ordnance QF 18-pounder. All three field guns were used in essentially the same way at the outbreak of WWII- fired over open sights at targets the gunners can see. Howitzers that worked on similar lines were also developed, like the British QF 4.5-inch howitzer and the German 10.5 cm howitzer. The French did not seriously develop howitzers in the run up or WWI and relied (some might say over-relied) on the 75mm gun. These howitzers were used for indirect fire, sometimes at targets outside the gunners' sight range. In 1914, German 10.5cm guns were used very effectively to silence French field guns, while the 7.7cm guns provided direct fire support for the infantry.
This video has more in the subject: _URL_1_ | [
"However, early cannon were not very effective, the main benefits being psychological, frightening men and horses. Short barrelled, large-calibre \"bombards\" were used up until the late 15th century in Europe, during which period they grew increasingly larger. In the mid-15th century, mortars also appeared. Variou... |
What would happen if you separated a fertilized human egg cell right after it split for the first time? | Identical twins, if the separation occurs *in utero*, or if both are implanted in a receptive womb.
This is also common practice in IVF/cloning genomics, as all of the cells in a zygote retain their [totipotency](_URL_0_) (aka. a stem cell's ability to differentiate into any other cell type) through the [morula](_URL_1_) (aka. 16-cell) stage. If doctors or researchers want to conduct pre-implantation genetic testing for a disease, a cell or two can be removed from the morula without impacting on its ability to complete normal, healthy development. | [
"If the chromosome pairs fail to separate properly during cell division, the egg or sperm may end up with a second copy of one of the chromosomes. (\"See\" non-disjunction.) If such a gamete results in fertilization and an embryo, the resulting embryo may also have an entire copy of the extra chromosome.\n",
"Dur... |
why regulator water looks carbonated after it's been sitting (in a glass) for a while. | Water out of the tap has gases dissolved in it. Not, you know, a lot, but some. As it sits in the glass, imperfections in the inner surface provide sites for bubbles to form as the gas tries to leave the water. It's a much slower, tidier presentation of the same effect that creates the Diet Coke and Mentos trick. | [
"Modern variants of water coolers have been equipped with options for sparkling water as a result of increasing demand for carbonated beverages and also a greater awareness to healthy living, resulting in preference for carbonated water over sweetened carbonated beverages. This works with the addition of a mixer ta... |
How effective are microwave ovens at attenuating microwave radiation? | Maybe some electromagnetic radiation leaks through, but it's not really of concern. Personally I would not be worried at all. It took a while for people to stop thinking that microwave ovens didn't make your food radioactive (re. "nuking"), so your mom probably had some left-over anxiety from that phase of technological development.
If you want to be scientific about it, try taking two glasses of water, each containing a mass *m* of water, and leave them be until they reach room temperature. Put one of them in the microwave, and the other one outside the microwave door. Turn on the microwave for a while, until the water inside starts boiling for example. Measure the water temperature in the outside glass before and after, and observe the temperature difference d*T*.
Total energy deposited in the water outside is:
Q = 4.18 kJ/(C * kg) * m* d*T*.
Where the 4.18 kJ per degree per kilogram is the [specific heat capacity](_URL_0_) of water. To heat 1 liter of water (1 kg) 1 degree, it takes 4.18 kJ of energy.
If you use imperial crazyunits, I feel bad for you son. | [
"Microwave heating, as distinct from RF heating, is a sub-category of dielectric heating at frequencies above 100 MHz, where an electromagnetic wave can be launched from a small dimension emitter and guided through space to the target. Modern microwave ovens make use of electromagnetic waves with electric fields of... |
Is the higher sea level during the Medieval Warm Period a result of melting glaciers? | /u/ccajunryder has explained the reason why this particular castle is no longer coastal, but I'd like to make a more general point regarding reconstructions of past sea-level.
It's important to distinguish between *eustatic* sea-level change, and *relative* sea level change. Eustatic sea-level change is what we're interested in - it's the sea-level measured relative to the centre of the earth and it's only affected by (1) the volume of the ocean and (2) the volume of water in the ocean. Eustatic sea-level change is what the increasing temperature of the oceans and melting of the ice-sheets is causing (melting glaciers actually contribute relatively little because of their small size), and it affects everywhere equally.
Relative sea-level change is the local sea-level change relative to a particular point on the Earth's surface, and there is a whole spectrum of reasons why relative sea-level change can differ (quite dramatically in some cases) from eustatic sea-level change, including:
* Tectonic uplift/subsidence
* [Postglacial rebound/subsidence](_URL_0_)
* Sediment loading at river deltas/estuaries
* Changes in ocean circulation
* Local changes in gravity due to the melting ice-sheets
* Regional differences in ocean temperatures and salinity
You therefore *cannot* arbitrarily use a particular record of past sea-level change, even if it's accurate for the local sea-level change, to infer past eustatic sea-level change without a complete understanding of the component of relative sea-level change. There are only a few particular sites which are suitable for high-precision reconstructions of past eustatic sea-level change, which are generally tectonically inactive subtropical or equatorial coral platforms which are far away from most of the above factors. Even if there wasn't silting up of the region around that castle in southern England, a sea-level record from southern England would be relatively useless for reconstructing past eustatic sea-level change because of regional subsidence etc. | [
"A rise in temperature will cause the glaciers to melt, when water heats up, it expands, both of these factors contribute to a rise in sea levels which will put people living in lowland areas, for example The Netherlands in danger.\n",
"As northwest Europe slowly began to warm up from 22,000 years ago onward, fro... |
why do our bodies slip into comas? | A person falls into a coma when a part of the brain, for what ever reason, gets damaged.
The brain works as a whole, and when a part isn't working, the brain can't function properly. When this occurs, the brain basically goes into "recovery mode", in which it tries to repair the damaged parts. The thing is, there is no indicator when, or even if it will repair the damage. That's why a person, in a coma that isn't medically induced, can sometimes stay in a coma for just a few days, and other times stay there for years, possibly never waking up again.
| [
"People in comas have \"presence of brain stem responses, spontaneous breathing or non-purposeful motor responses.\" However, comas can result in brain death, or recovery or even a persistent vegetative state.\n",
"A coma is a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened; fails to ... |
How do we know that the ancient ice sheets of USA were over a mile tall? |
Glaciers deposit rocks and gravel in a "terminal moraine" at their edges: we can map this and estimate the area that was covered by ice sheet. But the thickness is a little trickier. There are three ways to calculate the ice sheet thickness:
First, we can use mathematical and computer modeling of the ancient ice sheets. All the modern ice sheets (Greenland, Antarctica) have a particular height profile that depends on the properties of ice, so we assume the same physics applied during the last ice age.
We also know the amount that sea level dropped during the last glacial maximum. We can compare the volume of water in our simulated ice sheets against the volume of water missing from the ocean.
Finally, we can identify a few mountains where the ice flowed around the mountain but didn't get over the top: that tells us how high the ice was at that location.
_URL_0_
_URL_1_ | [
"The visible \"tips\" of icebergs typically range from above sea level and weigh . The largest known iceberg in the North Atlantic was above sea level, reported by the USCG icebreaker \"East Wind\" in 1958, making it the height of a 55-story building. These icebergs originate from the glaciers of western Greenland ... |
--unions | A union is essentially a group of workers joining together to create a company that negotiates on their behalf with their employers.
My mother is part of the Canadian United Postal Workers (CUPW). And is going to become a steward.
Essentially, her union helps handle any claims for Worker's Comp, make sure that she isn't mistreated, and handle any contract negotiations ranging from wages to benefits.
The benefits of joining a union is that you are guaranteed a certain level of benefits and pay, and when the time comes that you might have to fight your employer because of an on-site injury, or harassment, the union is there to support you, giving you some weight instead of being a single person against a company, or even the government.
Employers don't like Unions because without them, they could really give people poor wages and compensation. McDonald's is a great example, a lot of McDonald's full-time employees are on government assistance and aren't able to live off of the job. But if they had a union, then the union could go to McDonald's and say "Hey, none of the workers are going to work anymore if you don't give them enough to live on" | [
"Today, unions are usually formed for the purpose of securing improvement in pay, benefits, working conditions, or social and political status through collective bargaining by the increased bargaining power wielded by the banding of the workers. The trade union, through an elected leadership and bargaining committe... |
How do weather radars differentiate which parts of a storm are more severe? | Modern weather radar measures the reflection of waves from the transmitter - greater reflection equals greater precipitation (moisture in clouds, rain, snow or hail). By combining inputs from different receivers you can obtain a very accurate representation of the boundaries and intensities (a single radar system can blank out events behind a significant one - this can be a major issue with airborne radar - we see a major system and no echoes behind it, so the perception is that a quick passage is possible or a turn behind the cell (both bad ideas)).
_URL_0_
_URL_1_
| [
"A weather radar network uses a series of typical angles that will be set according to the needs. After each scanning rotation, the antenna elevation is changed for the next sounding. This scenario will be repeated on many angles to scan all the volume of air around the radar within the maximum range. Usually, this... |
why do people think obama is a socialist? | During any election, the Democrats try to demonize the Republican candidates while the Republicans try to demonize the Democrat candidates. Since the Republicans wanted to win the presidential election, they spent time and money promoting the idea that Obama was bad. Specifically, since Obama made statements about helping the poor and "spreading the wealth" from the rich, political opponents tried to characterize Obama as an extremist and a socialist. (Americans associate socialism with evil and the USSR.) Simply put, it's based not on Obama's actions as president, but on a narrative used by people who want him defeated in the next election. | [
"Alkhateeb, in response to the usage of his image, said, \"To accuse [Obama] of being a socialist is really ... immature. First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?\" He also stated \"socialism is an idea thats time has come and passed. It’s basically like calling someone a loyalist to the British crown\".\n... |
why is cooked fish "flaky" and layered compared to beef, poultry, pork, mutton, etc? | Muscles, aka meat, contract. That's what they do. They can't exactly bend on their own.
Most animals we eat move by contracting muscles: think what happens when you bend your forearm:your biceps contracts and pulls your forearm closer to your upper arm.
Fish, on the other hand, move by wiggling their whole bodies. To imitate this 'bend' many smaller muscles are connected one to the next to the next.
Think bending your index finger: each part pulls the next one closer and the next one, the one after it.
When cooked, the connections between the muscles softens, that's why it seems flaky. | [
"Research shows that mutton contains more than other types of meat, unsaturated fatty acids, very little cholesterol, a high content of the mineral part. Also in this type of meat there is a sufficient amount of valuable components and trace elements including. easily digestible proteins, phosphorus, magnesium, cal... |
why can't we derive energy from gravity? | We can, and do. You've described the concept of [tidal power](_URL_0_). The bulge in sea level you mentioned is just high and low tide, and the "bucket" can be a dam that fills a reservoir at high tide and releases at low tide.
It doesn't violate conservation of energy, because the _ocean_ pulls on the _moon_, too. All else equal, and ignoring the effects of Earth's rotation, you'd tug on the moon's orbit and slow it down. The slowing, in this case, would be imperceptible. The energy ultimately comes out of the Moon's kinetic energy in its orbit. | [
"Gravitational energy is the potential energy associated with gravitational force, as work is required to elevate objects against Earth's gravity. The potential energy due to elevated positions is called gravitational potential energy, and is evidenced by water in an elevated reservoir or kept behind a dam. If an o... |
if patents are only supposed to last 20 years, why are there so many issues with technology patents from the 80's and 90's? shouldn't they have expired? | Patents last 20 years. Unfortunately, companies do the (arguably) unethical thing of tweaking their invention slightly, making it technically a new, novel invention but still similar enough to carry out the same work as the original invention. They can then patent this new invention and have another 20 years of protection. This act is referred to as "[evergreening](_URL_0_)" | [
"Various laws have provisions to limit the practice, but as of 2018 the issue remains a concern among legislators. According to one study, 12 top-selling drugs attempted an average 38 years of patent protection, above the granted 20 years. Another study found that nearly 80% of the top 100 drugs extended the durati... |
What was the go-to poison for scheming nobles in medieval Europe? | I've really only studied the situation in the high Middle Ages and early modern period, but at that time there were essentially a couple of major alternatives available: arsenic-based poisons, and what was known as "corrosive sublimate" – [mercuric chloride](_URL_2_).
The problem that poisoners faced, then as now, was not so much finding a poison that worked (although understanding exactly what it was about a poison that *caused* it to work was, of course, pretty sketchy at the time, which is why the basic ingredients we know were active poisons were so often supplemented by others that were less toxic, or even not toxic at all, such as toadflax, Spanish Fly, extract of snapdragon, a solution of pennywort known as *aqua cymbelaria*, and even madmen’s spittle). It was finding a poison that was sufficiently subtle in its actions to not make it immediately obvious that the victim had been poisoned. In the period you're interested in, that problem was lessened by the ubiquity of sudden and painful death from all manner of ailments, even in people who had previously been young and healthy. For that reason, while poisoning was often suspected as a cause of death, it was almost always very difficult to prove that it had been involved.
Working back from the symptoms reported in major cases of poisoning, such as those committed at the Medici court or, later, the cases that breathed life into the infamous [Affair of the Poisons](_URL_4_) at the court of Louis XIV, we can say with some certainty that the majority apparently involved various arsenic-based compounds. But during this same period, a belief evolved in the existence of – actually non-existent – so-called "slow poisons", which, it was believed, were far more precise and had essentially no tell-tale symptoms. This belief, in turn, fuelled quite a lot of work in alchemical laboratories, and eventually some interesting 17th century poisoning scares.
I wrote in some detail about the slow poison called "Aqua Tofana" [here](_URL_1_), and also contributed to a book of essays on poison in the period you're interested in, *[Toxicology in the Middle Ages and Renaissance](_URL_0_)* (2017). The latter book includes several other pieces that you would find of interest, including Sheila Barker on poisons at the Medici court and Cathy Cobb on the Borgias. Jo Hedesan's chapter on alchemical perspectives on poisons is excellent for filling in detail as to what contemporary theory had to say about how they worked.
I'd also strongly recommend that you take a look at u/sunagainstgold's fascinating look at [medieval cases of supposed well-poisoning](_URL_3_) for an alternative perspective on the whole issue. | [
"During the 13th century, sorcery was involved in many deaths. They were thought to be done with magic, but were usually a result of poisoning. In 1324, there was a very famous case involving a series of events caused by sorcery in Ireland. Author George Melton wrote, \"Lady Alice Kyteller was charged with performi... |
how does the liver work? like mechanically? | Poisons work in a lot of different ways.
Cyanide.
It doesn't get turned into a 'not poisonous' cyanide by the liver. There is no such thing.
Cyanide works by blocking the cells ability to uptake oxygen.
Very small amount, there's no issue, as the amount of cyanide can't effect enough cells to have a negative effect. Generally up to 0.5mg/L.
Cyanide is present in certain fruits, nuts etc.
After 0.5mg/L, there starts to be enough to mess with your body. It creates heart issues, brain problems, low blood pressure.
Over 3mg/L will kill you, as your body cannot recover or deal with the lack of oxygen in the cells and you'll die of a heart attack shortly after.
| [
"The liver is an organ only found in vertebrates which detoxifies various metabolites, synthesizes proteins and produces biochemicals necessary for digestion. In humans, it is located in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen, below the diaphragm. Its other roles in metabolism include the regulation of glycogen st... |
If inflammation is an immune response, then why are so many medicines that we take anti-inflammatory? | Typically it is to decrease the inflammatory responses in cases where it is inappropriate or overly strong. Sometimes immune responses can be so strong locally that they end up having systemic effects, which can result in non-productive inflammation that doesn't help in alleviating the disease or in healing tissue damage. You might also take a steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to help alleviate allergic responses or autoimmune responses, as another example. | [
"Inflammation is the first innate immune response to infection or irritation resulting from leukocyte (neutrophils, mast cells, etc.) accumulation and their secretion of inflammatory, biogenic chemicals such as histamine, prostaglandin, and pro-inflammatory cytokines. As cited, it has recently been discovered that ... |
Is there any substance that dissolves carbon? | Don't bother looking to dissolve the carbon, instead burn it off.
Assuming this is a 100% stainless steel pot, with no copper or combination metals, you should be able to put your oven on self-clean and put the pot in the oven and it will burn the carbon off of your pot as the self cleaning oven also burns off the stuck food residues off of it.
EDIT: In response to the pictures. I thought this was more of a science experiment gone bad where someone was trying to caramelize some sugar or something. For that kind of pot cleaning, white vinegar is great. Also use it for cleaning coffee pots, softening your whites, clean buildup in an old dish washer, polish brass and copper, and so much more _URL_0_ | [
"Atomic carbon, systematically named carbon and λ-methane, also called monocarbon, is colourless gaseous inorganic chemical with the chemical formula C (also written [C]). It is kinetically unstable at ambient temperature and pressure, being removed through autopolymerisation.\n",
"\"n\"-Butylsodium has an ionic ... |
what are the procedures to a man going overboard on a ship (commercial, private or military). | On a Navy ship an alarm is sounded, and a marker is put in their computer system with the lat and long of where they went overboard. The ship performs an S-turn so that they end up facing back the way they came. They deploy a RHIB to retrieve the man overboard. Sailors are also often fitted with a sensor on their uniform that is assigned to them so they know who it is, but it is also a beacon with a readout on the bridge and also on the retrieval boat/RHIB. | [
"In some cases the captain may choose to scuttle the ship and escape danger rather than die as it sinks. This choice is usually only available if the damage does not immediately imperil a vast portion of the ship's company and occupants. If a distress call was successful and the crew and occupants, the ship's cargo... |
how does someone born without a birth cirtificate or social security number obtain identification later in life? | People are not born with Social Security Numbers. Parents usually apply for them quickly, because they need one to claim the child as a dependent on their tax return--but it's wholly optional. Whether it's the parents applying or the person themselves as an adult, they need to provide sufficient proof of identity and in particular of their date of birth.
Birth certificates are issued by the jurisdiction in which you are born. They are meant to be issued at birth, but sometimes they aren't. Some jurisdictions will issue a delayed certificate if you can prove your date of birth. However, for any purpose for which you ordinarily need a birth certificate in the United States, it also suffices if you have proof there is no certificate--such as a letter from your state registrar that there is no certificate on record. That being the case, you will be permitted to provide alternate proof of your date of birth, such as newspaper publications, early school and doctor's records, family bible recordings, and other evidence. | [
"From October 1, 1999, the PRC State Council approved the establishment of a citizen identification number system, and currently consists of an 18-digit code. This number, to some extent, has a function similar to that of the social security number in the United States, and each citizen has a unique number that rem... |
In the late 1700's, was there any serious discussion of creating two separate American nations - one southern/slave-owning and one northern/free - or was it always presumed that all 13 colonies would form a single nation? | Simply put, no there was never a discussion like this that took hold on the national stage during the prelude to the War for American Independence. Examinations into what abolitionists movements were like during this period and also looking into the opinions of separation from the U.K. in general reveal why this is so.
Throughout the 1760s and early 1770s, it was only an extreme minority of Americans who desired seperation from Great Britain. During revolts to policies like the [Stamp Act](_URL_1_) or the [Intolerable Acts](_URL_0_), the goal was always reconciliation and gain mutual respect between the two nations. There were many percieved benifits to staying under the control of Great Britain, mostly economical and militaristic benifits that strongly benifited the 13 colonies. This is why most Americans, *especially* the majority of the landed gentry sought every possible solution to reconciliation with the British Empire.
The majority of gentry supported policies like *[The Olive Branch Petition](_URL_2_)* even after hostilities had broken out between the colonies and the empire. So by the time 1776 roled around and they realized that war was an inevitability, only then did majority support for independence happen. Few founders were like John Adams, [who seemed to want separation from Great Britain](_URL_3_) consistently through this period. By the time they recognized that war was inevitable, they bonded together since there was no way that they could achieve anything without working together. It's also worth noting that the original idea for "America" is that there would be 13 different *countries* or *states* (country is a synonym for states) that would have loose affiliation with one another. This was outlined under the terms of the Articles of Confederation (drafted in 1776, became governing model in 1777, endorsed in 1780). It was not until the creation of a strong central government through the U.S. Constitution that the idea of one strong united country came about.
Abolitionist movements were not that large in the 1770s and held very little political power. Certain groups, like Quakers, consistently moved to push Abolitionist causes through this period, but they were a minority. In fact, every state allowed slavery in 1776. Only two, Vermont (which wasn't even a state yet in 1776) and Massachusetts had systems in place that granted freedom to slaves by the end of the American Revolution. So dividing two nations between slave/free would make no sense since every state practiced legal slavery.
There was not a discussion around creating two nations out of the American colonies because every state was a slave state in 1776. And because most founders were reluctant to go to war from the start, they suddenly found themselves as reluctant separatists who realized that if they were going to separate from Great Britain, they would need each other. That's why it was drastically important that all states work together when they decided to formally declare their independence. | [
"The colonies were independent of one other long before 1774; indeed, all the colonies began as separate and unique settlements or plantations. Further, efforts had failed to form a colonial union through the Albany Congress of 1754 led by Benjamin Franklin. The thirteen all had well-established systems of self-gov... |
why does the volume vary so much on different channels? | America is atrocious for standards. I live in Japan and every channel has the same volume and display ratio but when I go back home I am baffled by the lack of uniformity among stations. | [
"For the element of distribution, we can know how the volume will move by changing distribution efforts or, in other words, by each percentage shift in the width or the depth of distribution. This can be identified specifically for each channel and even for each kind of outlet for off-take sales. In view of these i... |
why can't you eat nuts even *near* some people with nut allergies? | The oils in nuts, and many foods, evaporate. Once airborne someone nearby who is severely allergic can breathe them in and have a reaction.
Additionally these oils can transfer to things that you touch after you eat them, so if the person allergic touches that item too they can have a reaction.
And finally with kids, if they are young enough they may accidentally consume it either because they did not know the allergen was in the food (such as a parent bringing in cookies) or via trade with someone's lunch (which is also a contact exposure risk). | [
"Those with tree nut allergies may be allergic to one or to many tree nuts, including pecans, pistachios, pine nuts, and walnuts. Also seeds, including sesame seeds and poppy seeds, contain oils in which protein is present, which may elicit an allergic reaction.\n",
"One of the most common food allergies is a sen... |
If we put a powerful enough telescope on Mars, could we watch (and record) events on Earth several minutes after they actually occurred? | > it seem to me that events that happened on Earth wouldn't be "seen" on Mars for as long as 22 minutes. Is my assertion correct?
Yes.
> Testing this should be easy
It's not even something we need to test. It happens already in the opposite way already. When Curiosity landed, we didn't know for however long if it crashed or not, but it had crashed or no regardless. We saw into the past in that case.
> we have no way to send recording specifics to Mars faster than the light of any past incident we may want to record. For example, we can't tell a rover on Mars that we need to record a car accident that happened minutes ago because the light from the incident would have passed Mars before the instruction could have gotten to the rover.
Yep! | [
"The Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) science investigation used 3 instruments: a narrow angle camera that took (black-and-white) high resolution images (usually 1.5 to 12 m per pixel) and red and blue wide angle pictures for context (240 m per pixel) and daily global imaging (7.5 km per pixel). MOC returned more than 240... |
what’re the benefits of dha? | DHA, (or Docosahexaenoic Acid) is just a type of omega-3 fat.
Your body makes a small amount of DHA naturally from other fatty acids, so if you want to take a super-dose to supplement it, you can. There's a lot of science surrounding omega-3 fats as beneficial to health, but the primary benefits are generally accepted to be:
Reduced risk of heart disease, (though JUST DHA tends to be worse than DHA and EPA combined in reducing bad cholesterol)
possible benefit for ADHD, as DHA is said to increase blood flow in your brain during mental tasks, and people with ADHD have been seen to have lower naturally occurring blood levels of DHA
Reduced risk of early preterm births, based on a study specifically tracking pregnant women taking DHA, vs those taking a placebo
Fighting inflammation, Omega-3 fats in general, including DHA, have this effect.
Muscle recovery after exercise, based on reported soreness after taking DHA daily for a week or so in regularly-exercising individuals
There are a bunch of other reported benefits, but it should be noted that most of these reports are based one one or two studies and it's not necessarily CONCLUSIVELY the result of DHA (though nobody's saying it's BAD for you).
So if nobody's reporting problems with taking it, and some people report benefits after taking it, then folks will start to say it's beneficial to take. | [
"DHEA can be supplemented or taken as a medication in the form of prasterone to replace adrenal androgens later in life if it is desired. Some clinical studies have found benefits of DHEA supplementation in the elderly and people with adrenal insufficiency.\n",
"DHED has been proposed as a possible novel estrogen... |
how does a pedal powered generator work? | Almost all electricity you use on a regular basis is generated the same way. If you have a coil of wire and a magnet, moving one or the other near each other will produce electricity (the flow or movement of electrons). The faster the parts (coil or magnets) are moving, the higher more electrical energy is produced. In this sense, ALL electrical generators (except batteries, solar or other relatively modern sources) are the same: windmills use wind to spin a magnet, power plants use steam to spin wheels attached to a magnet, dams dump water over wheels to spin a magnet.
Your bike generator has a little wheel that rubs against the bike wheel that spins a magnet (or coil, not sure). The faster you pedal the more electricity you can generate for the light. You don't get this for "free". Electricity is a form of energy, so you have to either pedal harder or go slower when the generator is engaged.
As far as the "parts", a bike generator probably has some gears that change the speed of the rotation from the little wheel to the spinning electricity parts. Like I said before, any coil of wire and magnet will produce electricity, but the strength depends on the speed of the motion (and the strength of the magnet).
I don't know if bike generators produce AC or DC. As far as an ELI5 explanation goes, it's not really important because lightbulbs don't usually care between the two (unless they're LED's). | [
"An engine-generator or portable generator is the combination of an electrical generator and an engine (prime mover) mounted together to form a single piece of equipment. This combination is also called an \"engine-generator set\" or a \"gen-set\". In many contexts, the engine is taken for granted and the combined ... |
how do papercuts occur? | Simply put, when paper is cut into it's form (say a book or so) the paper is left with a very sharp, clean edge. If you run your finger against a sharp object like that, you're bound to get cut | [
"Papercutting or paper cutting is the art of paper designs. The art has evolved uniquely all over the world to adapt to different cultural styles. One traditional distinction most styles share in common is that the designs are cut from a single sheet of paper as opposed to multiple adjoining sheets as in collage.\n... |
like we see ants, can ants or other insects see bacteria or micro-organisms as their "ants"? | No. In fact ants have *worse* visual detail than humans do. While their legs may be more precise than ours, their eyes are not. They can't see micro-organisms. | [
"The identity of the fungus remains a mystery. It is known that they are a species of the basidiomycete family Lepiotaceae. Some researchers believe all fungus-growing ants cultivate just one species, \"Leucocoprinus gongylophorus\". The fungus produces special structures, called gongylidia, which have evolved to b... |
why do so many americans hate on france when france is america's biggest ally throughout history and helped america gain independence? | You're going to get a lot of "reasons," but the truth is we do it because it's funny. There is some history with some political stuff and things and whatever, but every country has that with every other country. The real reason France gets it harder than any other country is because the jokes are funnier. | [
"French–American relations refers to the diplomatic, social, economic and cultural relations between France and the United States since 1776. France was the first ally of the new United States. The 1778 treaty and military support proved decisive in the American victory over Britain in the American Revolutionary Wa... |
How old are the shells on a beach? | The overwhelming majority of shells you'll pick up on a beach are recently deceased organisms, a couple of years old at the most.
There are exceptions, in settings where eroding, older, shell-bearing sand deposits are feeding a given beach and fossil shells are thus released. For instance, I have such an example right across the river in Québec City, where Pleistocene sands are eroding next to the St-Lawrence and dumping periglacial brachiopod shells on a modern fluviatile beach where no such creatures now live (you'd have to go to the Labrador Straights to find some). But even despite such recogniseable exceptions, the overwhelming majority of shells are very recent. | [
"For dead shells of marine species on sandy beaches, these minute empty shells wash up in the lightest deposits of beach drift, in more sheltered areas where the very smallest particles of detritus are left behind by the retreating tide; this is often in a rather flat and level part of the beach. When at least some... |
what the hell has kanye west done to warrant so much boasting? | First and foremost, Time's Person of the Year list is about who was in the news the most. It's not about best or most important person of the year.
Why is Kanye in the news so much? Because he positions himself to be. He's a powerful person in the music industry and his insane antics get him a lot of attention. His solo albums have sold more than 15 million copies in the past 10 years. He's had like a dozen top-10 singles, and he's been a featured artist on another dozen. He's been a huge starmaker, and he's probably the single most important, dominant voice in hip-hop. He almost single handedly helped to shift mainstream rap away from gangsta & crunk. In addition to all of this, his albums are incredibly well received critically- several are already considered modern classics of hip-hop. He's won 21 Grammys, making him the #6 most awarded artist of all time- he's on pace to be the #1 winner within 5 years. Three of his albums are on Rolling Stone's Top 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.
He's a smart businessman. He owns a food company (KW Foods LLC) that buys future franchising rights on chains. He has multiple fashion labels and lines to his name, and shoe deals too. He also is a philanthropist and has a charity that fights illiteracy; the charity is dedicated to his mother.
He's constantly the talk of the town, largely because of his bizarre and unpredictable behavior. He really rocketed to the world's attention with the "George Bush hates black people," comment on live television after Katrina. He's constantly making inappropriate comments to the media.
So yeah. He's a big powerful media presence. | [
"\"The New York Times\"' Kelefa Sanneh described him as \"a wounded hero beating the odds\" and it \"gave him a chance to prove that he was the exception to the rule that producers can't rap.\" \"Stylus Magazine\" called it \"a poignant, pop-culture-packed account of Kanye’s near-fatal run-in with Chaka Khan\". By ... |
why does everyone think people from canada are nice? | To be fair most of Canada thinks people from Montreal (and other parts of Quebec) are dicks.
Now... the fact that the homeless guy was rude to you when he found out you were from the USA may have more to do with the fact that you are from the USA than the fact that he is in Canada. Some people don't agree with American policy world wide. Some people don't like American arrogance (my husband is American and he can be very arrogant at times).
Generally speaking though, Canadians are more chill than Americans, and tend to be more polite (which is akin to being nice). Canadians tend to hold doors open for others (although to be fair this is not as common as it used to be) and to apologize to others even for the slightest of wrong doings.
I am in my 50's and will say that over all Canadians now are less nice than they used to be but I attribute that to the general growing population, and more stress.
Small town Canadians are still super friendly and nice. | [
"Today there are close cultural ties, many similar and identical traits and according to Gallup's annual public opinion polls, Canada has consistently been Americans' favorite nation, with 96% of Americans viewing Canada favorably in 2012. As of spring 2013, 64% of Canadians had a favorable view of the U.S. and 81%... |
what would make space shuttles move laterally when lifting off? | Some of the nozzles are angled, and many of them are steerable. They specifically *want* the vehicle to rotate and then head out as much horizontally as vertically -- it has to reach 17,000 mph horizontal velocity by the time it reaches orbital height. | [
"The vehicle began re-entry by firing the Orbital maneuvering system engines, while flying upside down, backside first, in the opposite direction to orbital motion for approximately three minutes, which reduced the Shuttle's velocity by about . The resultant slowing of the Shuttle lowered its orbital perigee down i... |
how do we know that humans have kept correct time since ancient past? maybe we have accidentally skipped a couple of days, and today is not 10th dec, 2013. | You know that the calendar is just an arbitrary date, right? We could just as easily call this the 47th of Wiggle. In fact, we know very well that we *have* skipped days when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. | [
"In India history has been kept for thousands of years mainly through the culture, traditions, the science of Vedas and Puranas. The traditional time scale is clearly defined in Yugas cycles. The two epic events listed below are based on the traditional time scale. The Guntur district is home to the oldest evidence... |
Why were there so many Scandinavian and German immigrants in the American Midwest? | I can't speak for German immigrants, but I can speak for the Danish immigrants, as I've studied the Danish emigration quite a bit, as I've got ancestors that moved to the States around this period - however, it might be useful for other potential answers if you specified a timeframe, as my timeframe deals with 1840 and onwards.
First some background - For Danish farmers in the early to mid 1800s, life wasn't exactly easy, but it was better than what it had been. Danish farmers had been dealing with what was called 'Stavnsbåndet', essentially a bond that bound men from ages 14 to 36 (Although in 1764 it was changed to include anyone aged 4-40) in what was more or less a form of serfdom. They were forced to live and work on the farm that they were born on, although you could buy your way out, but as a poor farmer, that wasn't exactly such an easy option, but for the landowner and any sons he might have, it was quite an easy task. The bond was initially introduced in the 1730s by King Christian the 6th in the response to a serious agricultural crisis that was caused by failing import.
Anyway, in 1788, on the 20th of June, the Danish government introduced the 'Agricultural Reforms', that would basically do away with the bond, and taper off slowly leading in to the 1800s, starting off with freeing the kids aged 14 and below from the bond - it all had a leading cause and effect, meaning that the idea was to do away with the whole bond slowly, but surely, and when the kids were freed initially in 1788, the full range of people affected by the bond wouldn't be freed until 1800. There was also a movement at the time to oppose the disbandment of the bond, where the main argument was that society would dissolve completely if it were to be done away with, and king Frederik the 6th had to step in to ensure that the bond was done away with for good. This gets important later on.
Anyway, on to what you're looking for - in the period from 1850 to 1920, 300,000 Danish citizens emigrated to America, 'God's own country', 'the land of opportunity', where 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness' is in the declaration of independence itself. The primary reason that a lot of Danish citizens emigrated was the homestead act of 1862, settlers would receive 160 acres of land if they fulfilled certain requirements. The fertile and cheap land was a very enticing offer to many, and the promise that they would be able to make their own life and their own destiny in America was enough to persuade a lot of people. Although, not everyone had a dream story to tell of emigrating to America. A lot of Danish people died practically penniless, with their whole lives thrown in to this venture, and no way to get out of it. Aside from all this, successful Danes who had emigrated were writing letters home that were printed in newspapers boasting of their success, this further encouraged emigration. Not only this, there was also a spree of unemployment, as the population had tripled since 1850.
To answer your question in short form, it was the promise of being your own man, your own master, and to quote my favorite poem, the captain of your own soul. Landowners back home would sometimes be brutal and unforgiving, and you weren't given a lot either for your hard work. To have an opportunity to move to America, to own your own land, and to be your very own man - many people simply couldn't pass that up, and they didn't. They went with the idea of rivers flowing with milk and honey, free land, and an opportunity to become a rich and prosperous farmer, and for a lot of people, they succeeded. Some famous Danish immigrants are Jacob Riis, the photographer, and Jean Hersholt, the actor.
Another reason is the 2nd Schleswig war in 1864 that cost Denmark Schleswig, Holstein, and Saxe-Lauenburg, 1/4th of the land at the time. Many of the Danish people living in those territories were now living under Prussian rule, meaning they had to serve in the German military, which also caused a major uproot of citizens.
A third reason is the fact that Danish men would only inherit their father's farm if they were the first born, or the most capable child. Under the Danish constitution in 1849, we had the 5 F's. Fjolser (Idiots), Fruentimmer (Housewife), Forbryder (Criminal), Fattiglemmer (A person who received financial support from the government), and Folkhold (People working under a landowner). All that this meant, was that you had to have a certain social status, have a clean criminal record, a certain amount of money, and to have never been receiving social benefits, and you had to be 30 years of age, and not be a woman - all of this has been done away with since then. This meant only around 15% of the population could vote, and more or less suppressed the 'lower class' of people, and left them without a voice. This was also one of the reasons for emigration. If you were a landowners son, but not the son slated to take over the farm, you were looking at a pretty sad future, unfortunately. A lot of the immigrants were young men in military age, looking for the opportunity to own land, and shape their own future, and not be stuck in the landless lower class, unable to influence your own country by even voting.
If you're Danish, there are 2 great books for you to read here - if not, I've included an English book that focuses on Iowa, a state that was influenced heavily by the Danish immigrants, and a review from the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs that deals with the social background of the emigrants.
['Danske i USA 1850-2000' \(Danes in America 1850-2000\)](_URL_3_)
['Rejsen til Amerika. Drømmen om et nyt liv' \(The journey to America. The dream of a new life\)](_URL_0_)
['A History of the Danes in Iowa'](_URL_2_)
['Flight to America: The Social Background of 300,000 Danish Emigrants...'](_URL_1_) | [
"Germans, Austrian, Swiss, and Scandinavians people migrated to North America in the nineteenth century. Germans made a strong contribution to the gene pool of Montana, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, New York City, and Chicago. The German American ethnic group (German: Deutschamerikaner) are the... |
Was Albert Pike a founder of the KKK? | "Conclusive evidence" seems to be the kicker, and "at best debatable" seems to be an apt summation. As related by the article that you link, the claim seems to originate with Walter L. Fleming's 1905 "*Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth and Disbandment*", based on finding his name on a list of members. The article is pretty skimpy, but poking around to find other sources on the matter, it appears that Pike *may* have served as the inaugural Grand Dragon in Arkansas, and the KKK's original "attorney general", and his possible membership is a *theory* as to how the various "fraternal trappings" found in the various rank names entered the KKK, as he had previously been a Sovereign Grand Commander in the Masons, and thus continued on that 'style'. All in all though, his alleged membership doesn't seem to be very well supported - there doesn't seem to actually have been an "attorney general" post for him to fill, for instance - and mentions of him in any half-way reputable work seem generally hedged in those terms, making clear that it is not a certainty, and pushing against it if anything. Some works simply make no mention of him. It should also be said here that his association with the Klan was advanced by those generally *in sympathy* with its broader aims, as the role that he was said to have in the founding helped to reinforce "*a direct link between the Klan and an illustrious roll call of former Masons which included six former Presidents of the United States"*, while in reality the Masonic connection is spurious at best.
What *can* be said with reasonable certainty though is that as the editor of the Memphis *Appeal*, he was openly sympathetic to the Klan. The paper wrote puff pieces about it, and editorials decrying the government attempts to suppress the organization and breaking up of 'peaceful meetings'. So while his actual membership thus seems in doubt, his general sympathies with the Klan and its objectives seem fairly established.
Worked cited:
* White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction by Allen W. Trelease
* The Ku Klux Klan: History, Organization, Language, Influence and Activities of America's Most Notorious Secret Society by Michael Newton
* A Life of Albert Pike by Walter Lee Brown
* Allerfeldt, K. (2016). Murderous Mumbo-Jumbo: The Significance of Fraternity to Three Criminal Organizations in Late Nineteenth-Century America. Journal of American Studies, 50(4), 1067-1088. doi:10.1017/S0021875815001176 | [
"During the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was a powerful political and social force in Indiana. In 1922 the Klan was introduced to Richmond by Robert Lyons, who began by recruiting at Reid Church, where his father, Samuel Ross Lyons (1849 – 1915), had been pastor years earlier. Robert Lyons was eventually appointed nation... |
how can those treadmill sensors tell what my heartrate is while i'm running really fast and the whole thing is shaking like crazy? | They work by detecting the electrical impulses your heart puts out every beat.
So long as you hold on to the sensors and complete the circuit, it doesn't make how much things are shaking. | [
"\"\"The FitnessGram™ PACER Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20-meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal. [beep] A single lap should be... |
Level with me: is the sugar from juice any better than sugar from sodas? | If your only concern is sugar, juice is slightly worse than soda, usually about 110 calories per cup (8 fluid ounces) vs. 100 cal per cup.
If we're talking about more than just calories, then juice does have vitamins, and it doesn't have the caffeine that you'll get with most sodas. | [
"Danone Actimel plain 0% contains 3.3 g of sugar, original plain contains 10.5 g of sugar, multifruit contains 12.0 g of sugar for every serving (100 g). None of those concentrations is higher than the level defined as \"HIGH\" by the UK Food Standards Agency (described for concentrations of sugar above 15 g per 10... |
what does the mc in front of people's last names mean? | "Son of."
[Source.](_URL_0_) | [
"For the first six seasons Mac's full name was kept anonymous as a running joke, though in the season four episode \"Mac & Charlie Die,\" Mac's father's name is listed as \"Luther Mac\" on his parole papers and his mother is referred to as Mrs. Mac. In the episode \"Who Got Dee Pregnant?,\" one of the McPoyle broth... |
How did the Russian Cossacks transform from rebels to bastions of nationalistic conservatism? | In a word? Yekaterina. In three? Yekaterina the Great.
From the beginning of their relations with ethnic Russians, the Cossacks were always far more independent than other vassals (such as the Vepsians/Veps or Muromians who were largely integrated into the ethnic identity 'Russian') due to their military prowess and general disdain for centralized authority which resulted in a penchant for semi-successful armed insurrection. Their affiliation with the imperial throne goes back to the Pereyaslav Rada (1654) during the reign of the second Romanov Tsar Alexei I (born Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov) whereby the former promised their allegiance to the latter in exchange for material Russian protection from the Turkic Crimean Khanate encroaching into their ancestral homeland. You can see a snapshot of that phenomena on [this map](_URL_3_) which shows the sort of aubergine-shaded Crimean Khanate pushing into the yellow-shaded Cossack territory. The Moscovy Tsardom-- progenitor to the Russian Empire-- is shown in green.
A subgroup of the ethnically diverse people generally referred to as Cossacks had been living in the region for centuries fighting off various other Turkic, Mongolian, and Turkic-Mongolian conquerers (such as the Golden Horde of Batu Khan-- grandson of Chinggis Khan-- and the Timurid Empire under Tamerlane) from the south and east as well as Slavic and Greek conquerers from the north, south, and west in the form of the by then-defunct Byzantine Empire and Kievan-Rus' federation. The ethnic make-up of the Cossacks themselves is thus a combination of all of these groups, but distinct from each.
Being surrounded by such powerful nations, as the Cossacks were, required that they ultimately pick a side-- they chose the Russians. According to Ukrainian historian Volodymyr Panchenko, this was not done out of any kind of loyalty or preference for the Russians, but rather as a necessary evil. That's really the story to ultimate Cossack capitulation (if you could call it that) to the Russians:
> The myth that *\[the Cossacks\]* were doing nothing but striving to \[...\] 'reunify' with Muscovy have long been exploded *\[sic\]*. It was once a revelation for me that Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who still managed to see in horror that the 'reunification' was quickly leading to the annexation of the Cossack state, was trying to break free in some way out of the brotherly embraces. ^(\[)[^(1)](_URL_2_)^(\])
Panchenko is a part of the common school of thought in Ukraine which traces the ethnicity of Ukrainians (as distinct from Russians) from the Cossack peoples so his perspective here is a bit biased given the nature of Russo-Ukrainian relations today and in general, but it is nonetheless an accurate assessment of the rock and hard place between which the Cossacks found themselves.
Regardless of that though, this decision obviously did little to change the fiercely independence-minded Cossacks, and within 20 years (16 to be exact) in 1670, the Don Cossack Stepan Razin had assembled an army of personal loyalists and began sailing up the [Volga River](_URL_0_) conquering each settlement along the way in the hope of reestablishing an independent Cossack homeland. The revolt was crushed, Razin was executed, and the Russians founded a brewery in 1795^(\[)[^(2)](_URL_1_)^(\]) which produced a beer named after him that is [still available today](_URL_4_). Unfortunately, the overall taste and body of this rather cheap lager, much like the results of Razin's uprising, lack a certain something to be desired.
So we have established that the Cossacks were affiliated with the Russians and that they weren't particularly happy about it: between Raznin's uprising in 1670, which opens the chapter of Cossack rebellion against Russian rule, and Pugachev's uprising in 1774, which closes it, the Cossacks launched no fewer than five other similar insurrections against their Russian overlords with varying degrees of success.
None were even close to as successful as the one led by Yemelyan Pugachev in 1774 though. When Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst succeeded the Romanov throne as Yekaterina II after her husband Pyotr III was deposed and executed, the aforementioned Pugachev launched a huge rebellion ostensibly in honor of Pyotr's divine right to rule. Fully analyzing Pugachev's rebellion is outside the scope of your question and that synopsis I provided above is a *big* oversimplification of the entire ordeal but I've done so because the revolt itself isn't as important to the answer to your question as the *result* of the revolt.
Essentially, Pugachev was able to consolidate widespread dissatisfaction with imperial rule: Orthodox Christian heresies, discontent non-Russian subjects, opportunists and rakes, homesteaders, as well as genuine freedom fighters flocked to his banner only to be crushed by the massive Imperial Russian Army within two years. Like Razin before him, Pugachev was executed before a Moscow crowd-- but instead of tightening restrictions upon and increasing repressions of the Cossacks as Alexei I had done a hundred years earlier Yekaterina II conceded a few of the points which instigated the revolt (such as restrictions on religious freedoms) accompanied by a few token overtures to the Cossack people. The one that mattered though was the establishment of the military outpost and territory *Yekaterindar* (translated roughly as *The Gift of Yekaterina*) in 1794.
By establishing and officially incorporating the erstwhile homeland of the Kuban Cossacks under Russian rule and then granting the territory some nominal operating autonomy in exchange for the same imperial protection afforded the Pereyaslav Rada-era Cossacks, Yekaterina was able to ally with her former adversaries against the advancing Ottoman Empire. See [this map](_URL_5_), which shows the Ottomans (labeled *Persia*) pressing all the way up to the border of the Russian Empire in the early nineteenth century. *Yekaterindar* went on to become one of the most important frontier cities in the Russian Empire and its current incarnation *Krasnodar* (translated roughly as *The Gift of the Reds*\-- renamed by, you guessed it, the Communists in 1920) is still home to a large amount of ethnic Cossacks.
So you basically have the same conditions as established by Alexei I, established a century and a half later by Yekaterina II but in the case of the latter, they stuck. That begs the question: what was the difference? Well again, I'd point you to the establishment and recognition of at least a portion of the Cossack homeland as just that. The Cossacks were brought into the fold, given some nominal autonomy, and expected to contribute to the greater Russian Empire as subjects-- powerful subjects sure, but subjects nonetheless. Joint Russian-Cossack military defense of the Cossack homeland under the aegis of Russian rule was responsible for repulsing Ottoman Turkish advances several times during the 19th and 20th centuries until the coming to power of Bolshevism saw the Cossacks once again violently and ruthlessly suppressed as a dangerous band of nationalists. | [
"The Cossacks, as a largely independent nation, had to defend their liberties and democratic traditions against the ever-expanding Muscovy, succeeded by Russian Empire. The Cossacks tended acted independently of the Tsardom of Muscovy, increasing friction between the two. The Tsardom's power began to grow in 1613 w... |
Why are some viruses difficult for the body to fight off? (Such as the current Ebola virus) | This might not be the most clear or concise answer, but I'll give it a shot.
The adaptive immune system works by recognizing pathogens (viruses, bacteria, toxins they produce, etc.) through specific interactions between antigen (basically, any molecule that is presented to an immune cell) and the receptors on the immune cells' surfaces, or by antibodies.
Each cell has a different specificity for a different antigen. So you can imagine cells with a number of different "shaped" receptors, and when a virus invades the body, in order to recognize it, the correct cell needs to bump into it. This isn't a problem for things we've been vaccinated against; in that case, your body has already has had a chance to recognize that dead or attenuated virus and produce lots of antibodies against it. So if you are vaccinated against polio, and your body encounters wild polio later on, it will be recognized relatively quickly compared to a virus previously un-encountered.
The problem comes when the virus is so infective of cells and so potent that it causes a lot of damage very quickly before the body has a chance to fight the infection.
Another case that's tangent to this are viruses that mutate very rapidly, such as HIV. In this case, a vaccine is thought to be impossible because the virus mutates so quickly, vaccinating someone with an HIV antigen would be useless since the virus will just mutate and change that antigen to a new enough form that your body will not recognize it. | [
"Because viruses use vital metabolic pathways within host cells to replicate, they are difficult to eliminate without using drugs that cause toxic effects to host cells in general. The most effective medical approaches to viral diseases are vaccinations to provide immunity to infection, and antiviral drugs that sel... |
when someone says the universe is 13.5 billion years old, what exactly does that mean? | Time is being defined as "what we're experiencing here on Earth right now." Hence the use of the word "years", which is an Earth-orbit related unit.
Basically, if they wanted to specify a different frame of reference for the universe age, they would have specifically mentioned it.
If you're wondering HOW they arrived at the "13.5" number, [this Wikipedia article](_URL_0_) explains it in some detail.
Briefly, there are two assumptions:
* That the rest of the universe, even the parts that are too far for us to observe, behave like the near parts of the universe that we CAN observe, so that we can generalize what we see.
* That the current behavior of galaxies moving away from us at the observed rate and acceleration, is not some recent phenomenon, but has always been happening (this is the Big Bang theory).
So they look at what they're seeing right now, and they assume that the forces of gravity etc. always behaved the way we currently observe, and predict backwards how long it could have taken to get to where we are right now. And they're using "size" and "time" in Earth terms. As if you could take the Earth "OUT" of the universe and observe without being affected by it, with time passing on Earth as you're observing as it does now (1 year per year). | [
"Modern scientific astronomy estimates the Age of the Universe as around 13 Billion years (13 * 10 years). Conversion of 1 day of Brahma into human years yields 8.58816 * 10 years (derived as 2 kalpas * 14 Manvantaras * 71 Chaturyugas * 12,000 Deva vatsaras * 360 human years). According to Vedas, there are 504 000 ... |
the relative differences in speed between 2g, 3g, 4g and lte technologies. | Each "G" represents a generation of data technology (2G stands for second generation). So they describe more of a range rather than a specific speed:
First Generation phones and towers were fully analog.
Second Generation phones and towers used a couple of major standards which ranged in speed from about 50 kbps to up to 1 mbps. There were a large number of transitional technologies in the second generation, so speeds generally increased more than in subsequent standards.
Third Generation began in 2003, and had no speed requirements. Most of the systems had peak speeds ranging above 144 kbps and averaged about 400 kpbs in practical use. This was when mobile broadband started becoming a branding term.
4G includes several standards (one of which is LTE) and standards should all have peak speeds between 100 mbps and 1,000 mbps (or 1 gbps). However, actual user speeds are likely to be slower than peak speed (due to movement, distance from the antenna, shared capacity, and many other reasons). | [
"4G/LTE has the potential of efficient multicast, which can increase the spectrum efficiency in broadcast type application to within a factor of maybe two compared to the newest (e.g. DVB-T2/T2Lite) broadcast protocols.\n",
"5G NR speed in sub-6 GHz bands can be slightly higher than the 4G with a similar amount o... |
How much can animals (specifically dogs) tell about humans based on our appearance? | For one thing, [they can recognize smiles.](_URL_0_)
Interesting caveat:
> But the dogs' recognition abilities had limits. In another test, when the gender of the person in the photos switched, the dogs' performances dropped.
> It is possible that facial expressions differ between men and women or that the dogs' close relationships with their owners interfered with their ability to recognize smiles on the faces of the opposite gender, the researchers write. | [
"The study shows that the “sniff test of self-recognition (STSR)”, as defined in the study, even when applied to multiple individuals living in groups with different ages and sexes, provides meaningful evidence of self-awareness in dogs. As such, these results may show that this capacity is not a feature specific o... |
how can servers go down for active users? | That's the sort of thing you'll try to do to manage demand, but it's made more complicated because a single user doesn't necessarily make one connection to the server and keep it open for the whole time you're playing. In your queue analogy, we need to let some of the people who are already in go out for a smoke and come back later. We can stamp their hand to show that they're one of the 900, but they have to get through the crowd to get back to the door so that we can see their hand and let them back in. And if they never come back, we have to decide when to stop waiting and give their slot to someone from the queue. | [
"On November 30, 2018 the servers were shut down, citing the license running out and the game making barely enough to keep the servers running. Due to the license only allowing online games, the game needs the servers to work, even in a 'play alone' mode, using NPCs instead of other players in the mission.\n",
"B... |
considering how common cracked phone screens are, why do the the manufactures seem to go out of their way to make the screens so damn hard to replace? | To make phones thin, manufacturers sacrifice modularity. No-gap screens have better optical quality. | [
"Due to advances in display technology, as of 2010s, OLED screens can be manufactured on a flexible, plastic substrate. Glass is no longer needed, allowing the displays to be rolled, bent and folded. This makes new form factors possible in mobile phones. In September 2017, Samsung confirmed a new series of foldable... |
in countries like the uk, or ne usa, when people live in remote, relatively isolated villages (say population < 500), what jobs do they do exactly? i mean, there are only so many jobs that the local farm or the village grocery store need. | Most of them are farmers. The 'local farm' isn't really a thing, but small farms are still common. A few people in the coffee shop, a few in the grocery, and some municipal administrators. Probably a bar. | [
"The majority of the people earn their livelihood through agriculture. There are also a number in government services, mostly army and police. Many young people go abroad and so people from the village are found in USA, France, South Africa, Spain, Greece, Italy, Salalah-Muscat (Oman), Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Dub... |
When the Roman Republic finally granted citizenship with sufferage to all Italian allies, which tribes were these new voters enrolled in? | The process is a little obscure. Our source for this is Appian, and he's not always the sharpest. In fact, Mouritsen thinks Appian is basically 2nd century CE historical fiction, with little relationship to actual events in the 1st century BCE. Most historians aren't that distrusting of him though.
For those not familiar, Rome had several assemblies all male citizens participated in, which were organized in different ways. The Centuriate Assembly was primarily responsible for electing magistrates. This was organized into wealth classes called "centuries" that each got one vote. The centuries were distributed such that the two wealthiest classes controlled the majority of centuries. The Tribal Assembly, on the other hand, was responsible largely for making law was organized into 35 tribes which derived their members geographically. There were four tribes for people who derived their origin from the city itself (Urban tribes) and 31 "Rural" tribes for Romans living elsewhere in Italy. Each tribe got one vote. While wealth apparently isn't a structural issue in this assembly as it is in the Centuriate Assembly, since Romans had to vote in person, the Rural citizens who could afford to travel or live in Rome were the ones that could take the most advantage of the vote. Romans were very aware of the structure of this system and did things to make sure the vote was controlled by the right people. For instance, a freed slave necessarily became a citizen, with a voting century and tribe, but to limit their influence on the state they could only be enrolled in one of the four Urban tribes, making their individual votes almost worthless.
Ok, on to the Social War. The reasons for the Social War are disputed: Rome's allies revolted for Rome either to win the Roman citizenship, to found federal Italian state, or to destroy Rome and the Empire. The traditional narrative derived largely from Appian and basically unquestioned until Mouritsen (1997?) is that Rome made increasing demands on the Allies, who had little input in policy and saw little rewards from that policy. In 91 a number of these Allies revolted, some remained neutral, and some (the Latin allies) fought actively for Rome.
In 90 the Etruscan and Umbrian communities had not yet taken arms against Rome, but apparently both the Romans and Italians thought they might go over to the Rebels. One of the things Rome did to forstall this was to pass a law enrolling allies who had not rebelled in the Roman citizenship. This is what Appian says:
> They sent this decree around among the Etruscans, who gladly accepted the citizenship. By this favour the Senate made the faithful more faithful, confirmed the wavering, and mollified their enemies by the hope of similar treatment. The Romans did not enroll the new citizens in the thirty-five existing tribes, lest they should outvote the old ones in the elections, but incorporated them in ten new tribes, which voted last.
As part of the settlement of the War in 89, Rome extended citizenship to belligerent Allies if they surrendered, which most accepted:
> Each body of allies was enrolled in tribes of its own, like those who had been admitted to citizenship before, so that they might not, by being mingled with the old citizens, vote them down in the elections by force of numbers.
This is confusing. The previous citizens must mean the Etruscans and Umbrians, but they weren't each enrolled in a tribe of their own, but rather distributed across ten tribes. There were also many more Italian communities than 10; each one getting a tribe would multiply the Italian influence instead of, as Appian says the purpose is, restricting that influence. I think it's fair to say the majority of historians think these Italians were enrolled in the *same* 10 tribes as the Etruscans and Umbrians.
This plan immediately became an issue. Appian says the tribune Sulpicius wanted to distribute the Allies across the 35 tribes in order to use their votes to control the assembly, and some Allies bought into this. Other Romans still opposed enrolling the Italians across the tribes and there were riots in the forum over this issue:
> The old citizens saw this and opposed the new ones with all their might. They fought each other with sticks and stones, and the evil increased continually, till the consuls, becoming apprehensive, as the day for voting on the law drew near, proclaimed a vacation of several days, such as was customary on festal occasions, in order to postpone the voting and the danger.
Sulpicius ended up being executed by Sulla for his support of Marius and his legislative work was undone. Getting the citizens enrolled across the tribes remained a policy the Marian party under Cinna pushed for, and there was more violence, but the government was not stable enough in this period to carry out a census. An attempt was made in 86, but that was never completed, and it was only in 70 Gnaeus Lentulus and Lucius Gellius completed a census, and the new citizens were enrolled in the existing 35 tribes, though they were not evenly distributed.
Lily Ross Taylor's *Roman Voting Assemblies* is the classic study and I don't think has been surpassed, even though it was published in what... 1960? She has a community-by-community breakdown of who ended up in which tribe, if you want that level of detail. | [
"Gaius submitted a franchise bill that sought the extension of Roman citizenship to all Latin citizens, and of Latin citizenship to all Italian allies. The bill was rejected because the Roman Patricians had no wish to share the benefits of citizenship, including subsidised grain and entertainment. The rejection of ... |
If Splenda supposedly can't be broken down by the body, does it make your urine taste sweet? | Sucralose isn't very well absorbed by the digestive system, only about 10-15% makes it into the bloodstream and therefore to the urine. The remainder passes unchanged into the feces and out of the body.
| [
"Choluria is the presence of bile in urine. Choluria is a common symptom of liver diseases, such as hepatitis and cirrhosis. It can be described as dark or brown urine, often referred to as the color of Coca-Cola. Choluria is usually manifested when serum bilirubin is higher than 1.5 mg/dL.\n",
"Most of Truvia's ... |
why is the comparison of the necessity for balancing our federal budget to balancing my personal budget flawed? | Here is why:
The US Federal Government is one of the largest sources of stimulus for the greater US economy. There are times (not 100% of the time) when it is better for the Federal Government to run a deficit, notably during periods of economic recession, because:
* Constraining the Federal Government to running in the black during periods when tax revenue is depressed is illogical. Tax revenue will bounce back eventually, and many government programs can't be stopped and started on a whim.
* The spending *by* the Federal Government helps stimulate the economy, pulling us out of that recession.
Now, in comparison, *your* personal finances do not, in fact, stimulate the economy, at least not nearly as much. Perhaps one three-hundred-millionth as much? Moreover, your revenues (your wages) are **not**, in fact, going to bounce back. You might not get another job. You might be 80 years old and not going to live a whole hell of a lot longer.
And, if you decide to say "FUCK YOU" to your creditors? Well, really, nothing happens. Aside from your credit rating tanking, nobody cares if you default on your loans. The US Federal Government, on the other hand, is considered to be the most unassailable, stable, rock-solid debtor on Earth. The US is the Lannisters: They always pay their debts.
This means that while the US Federal Government takes out their loans at the most attractive possible interest rate (1-Year T-Bills currently at 0.13%; No, that's not a typo) while you pay about 4.5%, and that's only *if* you put up collateral (the house you're taking a mortgage on).
So it's a hell of a lot cheaper for the US Federal Government to run a deficit, it's a hell of a lot more beneficial, and it's more practical than it is for you to do so. | [
"In 2003, approximately 90% of the members of the American Economic Association agreed with the statement, \"If the federal budget is to be balanced, it should be done over the course of the business cycle, rather than yearly.\" A reason cited by several leading economists is that a \"balanced budget amendment woul... |
This may be a dumb question but what come we know so much of the past? | You actually already give the answer! Everything we know about history is founded on sources- these can be ruins or book (and a lot more).
Since it's usually piecung stuff together, theories might have to be discarded when new evidence is found as well.
Historians have also existed for a long time (e.g. Herodot) and we base our own findings on theirs. | [
"Understanding the past appears to be a universal human need, and the telling of history has emerged independently in civilizations around the world. What constitutes history is a philosophical question (see philosophy of history). The earliest chronologies date back to Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, though no hist... |
Why does table salt dissolve in water but not isopropyl alcohol? | Don't listen to these guys, it's more complex that just polarity. IPA (isopropyl alcohol) is pretty polar: _URL_0_
I think it's less soluble in acetone which is **more** polar than water.
There are a few good rules about solubility - like dissolves like, etc. - but it is never really that simple. Generally, you can say compare the states biphasic with the one in solution and determine which is lower energy in order to find out if something is soluble, but that's not qualitatively helpful. It get's even harder when you consider colloids.
TL;DR: I'm a chemist and I hate solubility.
Edit: The Dipole moment on the wikipedia page is a measure of how polar something is - for comparison. | [
"Isopropyl alcohol is miscible in water, ethanol, ether, and chloroform. It dissolves ethyl cellulose, polyvinyl butyral, many oils, alkaloids, gums and natural resins. Unlike ethanol or methanol, isopropyl alcohol is not miscible with salt solutions and can be separated from aqueous solutions by adding a salt such... |
why is it that the amount of inertia and the strength of gravity are both based on mass? | You have stumbled upon one of the great mystery in physics! There is no known reason why all object with inertia interacts with gravity at the same proportion! Yet all observations demonstrate this. | [
"The distinction between mass and weight is unimportant for many practical purposes because the strength of gravity does not vary too much on the surface of the Earth. In a uniform gravitational field, the gravitational force exerted on an object (its weight) is directly proportional to its mass. For example, objec... |
how has snoop dogg not been arrested for smoking marijuana? | He has been arrested for possession of marijuana several times. Who ever told you that he hadn't didn't even bother to read Snoop's [Wikipedia entry](_URL_0_). | [
"Since the start of his career, Snoop has been an avowed cannabis smoker, making it one of the trademarks of his image. In 2002, he announced he was giving up cannabis for good; that did not last long (a situation famously referenced in the 2004 Adam Sandler movie 50 First Dates) and in 2013, he claimed to be smoki... |
why is it that heat helps abdominal pains, and sore and knotted muscles but it doesn't help with headaches? | Headaches are not muscle related. Heat, a lot of times helps muscles to contract/relax. Many times, headaches are caused by dehydration, an issue that applying heat would not help at all. | [
"Heat therapy can be used for the treatment of headaches and migraines. Many people who suffer from chronic headaches also suffer from tight muscles in their neck and upper back. The application of constant heat to the back/upper back area can help to release the tension associated with headache pain. In order to a... |
what exactly does it mean that the n64 runs on 64 bits? | It has to do with how the CPU and all the other essential parts of the console (the RAM, storage, and input/output) store and pass data to each other.
Let's start at a high level. You know that games are written in some kind of programming language - for the N64, I think it was C. [1]
Languages like C are ways for human programmers to express what they want the computer (or in this case, console) to do. Once the game developers are done writing the game, the C code gets **compiled** (translated, essentially) down to a simpler, but much harder to read - for humans, at least - language called **assembly**.
When we compile C code down to assembly, we have to break all the complicated structures like loops, if-else statements, function calls, etc. (which you may be familiar with if you've coded before) into a small set of simple **instructions**. These instructions essentially tell the CPU to do things like add a couple numbers, move some bits from one **register** (a storage unit within the CPU) to another, or go to a different instruction and execute that.
Assembly language is the closest you can get to directly moving bits around in the CPU, without actually expressing everything in binary (0s and 1s). In fact, assembly language is directly translatable to binary. This is where the 64-bit distinction becomes important.
You see, there is a reason everything eventually gets boiled down to 0s and 1s. At the hardware level, the only way we can represent information is through on/off states (i.e. high or low voltage levels) - off/low is represented by a 0, and on/high by a 1. We can store these states in registers, which I mentioned earlier, and pass them around and through logic gates (which take two sequences of bits as input, perform operations like AND, OR, NOT on them, and output the result) along **buses**, which are basically just wires on the circuit boards. Hence, once we translate our instructions from assembly into binary, we can store them in registers, fetch them, and execute them one-by-one. [2]
Now you may be wondering: how exactly do we know which instruction to fetch - for that matter, whenever the CPU needs data, how does it know where to find it? The answer is, we use more bits to represent the **address** of the instruction or data we want to fetch. The length of the address - how many bits are in it - tells us how many possible "cubbyholes" the data can reside in. Since an n-bit binary number can go from 0 to 2^n - 1, an n-bit address gives us 2^n possible places to look for an instruction or piece of data.
Likewise, the length of the instruction affects how much data you can convey in it. It only takes a few bits to tell the processor what operation to do; the rest of the instruction can be used to pass along data for that operation, like numbers to be added or the address of some data (possibly another instruction).
Now, finally, comes the answer to your question: the fact that the N64 "runs on 64 bits" means our value of n in this case is 64. So our addresses are 64 bits long, and so are our instructions. [3] This is called the **datapath width** of the processor, as it also means the physical buses between components are twice as wide.
Hence, any time you want to grab a particular bit in memory, you have 2^64 places to possibly get it from (quite a lot). Your instructions are also 64 bits long, which means that your registers must be 64 bits "wide" (i.e. can hold 64 bits) and to be consistent, all your other data must reside in memory in blocks of 64 as well.
So what's the point of all this? Let's work our way back up through the layers of abstraction to find out. As opposed to a 32-bit architecture, having all your addresses and data in 64 bits means that the CPU can hold more data in working memory i.e. it can support larger RAM sizes. You may have heard of RAM or even upgraded your computer with more RAM - it is essentially the "working memory" of the processor. While going about its tasks, the CPU can load data from disk storage into RAM, or store temporary data in RAM, and access it much faster than if everything was stored on disk. [4]
Hence, whereas a 32-bit processor can utilize at most 2^32 bits = 4GB of RAM, a 64-bit processor can support 2^64 = 2 exabytes of RAM! That's a massive improvement, and we're not even close to having hardware that powerful!
Another advantage is that since all data is in 64 bits, you can also represent larger values in your programming languages, so an integer variable that would have represented 2^32 - 1 (32 1's in binary) at most, can now represent 2^64 - 1. The downside to this is that the same data now takes twice as many bits to represent, with just a bunch of 0s at the front (i.e., 2^32 - 1 goes from being 32 1's to 32 0's and 32 1's). So the same program requires more memory to execute in a 64-bit system than in a 32-bit system.
All in all, having a 64-bit architecture offered the N64 greater speed and processing power. It's the same reason why you're seeing laptops and operating systems all switching to 64-bit now, and software coming in 64-bit as well as 32-bit versions.
I hope this made sense and gave you a better understanding of how every computer works at its core! Let me know if there's anything that needs clarifying :) Sorry about the length.
If you're interested in computer architecture a great resource is _URL_0_ - its a free course designed to teach you the fundamentals of computer systems, from the transistor level all the way up to designing your own processor! (Ever see those awesome Minecraft CPUs? This is the stuff they had to learn beforehand!)
Berkeley also has all of the lecture notes from our [computer arch course](_URL_1_) online, if you want to delve even deeper :D
Finally, footnotes are below - they're not essential to understanding the 64-bit distinction, but might answer any lingering questions you have!
[1] C is usually considered a relatively low-level language, meaning you get more direct control over the hardware (allocating bits in memory, etc.) so it's very powerful, but it takes more effort to understand, and code in. Higher-level languages like Python or Java abstract away these finer controls, trading them for more human-friendly syntax.
[2] This idea of essentially storing a program (a sequence of instructions) as data, and manipulating it like any other data was not obvious at first! It's called the *stored-program concept*, and led to the historic proposal of the [von Neumann architecture](_URL_3_), which is the basis for how all processors are designed today. It allowed us to progress from having to punch in the entire program every time you wanted to run it, to writing it once, compiling it, and then running it anytime you wish.
[3] Hold up, I said we could fit addresses into a 64-bit instruction after using some bits already, but addresses themselves are 64-bits long! Well, we can get away with *relative addressing* - instead of referring to an absolute position with 64 bits, we can just go backwards or forward from our current position by adding or subtracting those 58 bits from our current address (because remember, every instruction has an address!)
[4] Why is it faster for the CPU to access RAM than your hard drive? It's quite intuitive; the registers that make up RAM are physically much closer to the processor, whereas other storage mediums are usually farther away, and therefore data takes more time to travel back and forth (in addition to the time it takes to find the data in your hard drive!)
Hence, accessing memory from "off-CPU" is costly, whereas accessing registers on the CPU (arranged in caches) and nearby RAM takes less time. It's like borrowing a book from the library so you grab it from your desk whenever you want, as opposed to going back to the library everytime you need a book. These different places to store data form a *[memory hierarchy](_URL_1_lectures/14LecFa12CacheI.pdf)* that has a huge effect on program speed. | [
"In computer science Base64 is a group of binary-to-text encoding schemes that represent binary data in an ASCII string format by translating it into a radix-64 representation. The term \"Base64\" originates from a specific MIME content transfer encoding. Each Base64 digit represents exactly 6 bits of data. Three 8... |
what are the different kinds of lightbulbs? | There are [incandescent lightbulbs](_URL_1_). These have a bulb-shape and get hot. They work by putting electricity through a thin wire made of tungsten, which gets really *really* hot: hot enough that it shines brightly.
The other main type is [fluorescent](_URL_0_). These usually have a more spiral shape, although other shapes are possible. Roughly, these work by using electricity to excite mercury atoms (which are in a vapor inside the tube), causing them to emit ultra-violet light. The glass is coated with a special material the fluoresces, meaning it "converts" the ultra-violet light into visible light.
Also, you can make spaces in comments by typing
& nbsp;
For example:
& nbsp;
& nbsp;
& nbsp; | [
"An LED filament light bulb is an LED lamp which is designed to resemble a traditional incandescent light bulb with visible filaments for aesthetic and light distribution purposes, but with the high efficiency of light emitting diodes (LEDs). It produces its light by LED filaments, series-connected strings of diode... |
360 degree video. | The material is recorded as data that when played back through a software player allows the user control of the viewing direction and playback speed. You use multiple cameras to take video shots at the same time. Take each video at the same frames per second. Then take apart each video frame by frame and arrange and distort each video frame into a flat spherical view to create one larger video frame. Then put it all together in one new video. | [
"360-degree videos, also known as immersive videos or spherical videos, are video recordings where a view in every direction is recorded at the same time, shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras. During playback on normal flat display the viewer has control of the viewing direction like a pa... |
Why do some orbiting objects fall in and some away from what ever they are obiting when the lose energy? | The atmosphere doesn't end at 100 km high - there's still very tenuous bits of it hundreds of kilometers high. The ISS orbit is low enough that there's still enough friction to cause it to lose energy slowly - the Moon, however, doesn't have this.
The reason that the Moon is moving away is due to the tides it causes - there is friction between ocean water and the Earth, which takes away energy from the Earth's rotation and gives it to the Moon, moving it farther away. | [
"An object placed in orbit around (or ) will remain there indefinitely without having to expend fuel to keep its position, whereas an object placed at , or (all points of unstable equilibrium) may have to expend fuel if it drifts off the point.\n",
"If an orbit is about a planetary body with significant atmospher... |
will certain olympic sports reach a point where progress can't be made in them? | While record breaking may become increasingly rare, remember that participants aren't racing against records, just each other. So sure, records may one day become harder to break, but the races themselves will mean pretty much as much (or as little, depending on who you ask) as they do now. | [
"BULLET::::- European Commissionner Carlos Moedas made the following remarks: \"I think what you've achieved is nothing less than astonishing! The simplest innovations are the game-changers. And game-changing innovation doesn't always come easily to a sacred profession like medicine. Not many people are willing to ... |
if researchers can infect lab rats with most cancers by injecting them with cancer cells can they do that to humans too? | I don't know that that's actually done. I certainly haven't heard of it. If it is possible, I would say that due to selective inbreeding lab rats of a certain genetic lineage are nearly genetically identical. So, you can transfer tissues from one rat in that line to another without the tissue being rejected, including cancerous cells. In humans, you can't transfer cancerous cells from one person to another because the body rejects foreign tissues. In close family members you *might* be able to do it depending on several factors, the same factors that govern organ donation.
For what it's worth, in my lab we just breed mice to be more susceptible to cancer, and then feed them carcinogens or expose them to UV light. We don't inject them with cancerous cells. | [
"Naked mole-rats have a high resistance to tumours, although it is likely that they are not entirely immune to related disorders. A potential mechanism that averts cancer is an \"over-crowding\" gene, p16, which prevents cell division once individual cells come into contact (known as \"contact inhibition\"). The ce... |
Do we have any sources dealing with British people's reaction to or perception of propaganda during WWI? | Although I can't name any primary sources that deal specifically with Britons reactions to propaganda, I can suggest a number of excellent works by historians that deal with the subject. Most notably:
* *Myriad Faces of War* by Trevor Wilson
* *The Last Great War: British Society and the First World War* by Adrian Gregory
* *A Kingdom United* by Catriona Pennell
* *The Great War: Myth and Memory* by Daniel Rodman
* *State, Society and Mobilization during the First World War* and *Belgian Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial* by John Horne
Nicholas Hiley has also written on propaganda posters, and is worth looking into.
Unlike in Germany, the British government did not conduct a considerable amount of state organized propaganda. Most of it came via private organizations/individuals, such as men like Max Aitken and Lord Northcliffe, and was manifest in manifold forms, mediums, and connotations. Reactions to this propaganda was just as varied as the propaganda itself, but the trend most noticeable seems to be that positive, reinforcing propaganda emphasizing comradeship and working together, tended to gain more support and attention than negative propaganda, ie Women of Britain say Go!, Bash the Hun, etc. Moreover, propaganda tended to be successful when it 'jived' so to speak with public opinion and mood, rather than forcing an opinion or a message done people's throats. [Stephen Badsey gives an excellent lecture here, which touches on some of this] (_URL_0_). | [
"In World War I, British propaganda took various forms, including pictures, literature and film. Britain also placed significant emphasis on atrocity propaganda as a way of mobilizing public opinion against Germany during the First World War.\n",
"Atrocity propaganda was widespread during World War I, when it was... |
Ancient Greeks and Romans were using "actual" magic and believed in curses and prophecies. But were there illusionists, who would use trickery to entertain others? | Some authors describe hoax's used by magic users (cant remember the exact source but it was in Daniel Ogdens Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook). However illusions I'm not sure are ever described purely for entertainment purposes(happy to be corrected on that), but theres a probability of it having been done. As far as the economics of say a travelling illusionist goes I would say it would be hard to make a living doing so, however magic users are often described as door to door salesmen and some are said to have made a good living off it(same source as before, might be Plato who talks about the trend). Having illusionary skills may have helped with that trade, who knows? hope this was helpful. | [
"Performances that modern observers would recognize as conjuring have been practiced throughout history. For many recorded centuries, magicians were associated with the devil and the occult. During the 19th and 20th centuries, many stage magicians even capitalized on this notion in their advertisements. The same le... |
What percentage of the atoms in our bodies were in us a year ago? Ten years ago? | While most of your cells are constantly replaced, and even those that aren't will have a portion of their atoms exchanged through normal biological activity, some parts undergo exchange very slowly. For cells that don't divide and never get replaced, the DNA doesn't incorporate new, or lose old, atoms, unless they're damaged. | [
"Evidence for the existence of atoms was the law of definite proportions proposed by him in 1792. Richter found that the ratio by weight of the compounds consumed in a chemical reaction was always the same. It took 615 parts by weight of magnesia (MgO), for example, to neutralize 1000 parts by weight of sulfuric ac... |
why aren't all/most hospital items copper/silver plated? | Copper takes about 2 hours to completely disinfect a surface from bacteria and virus. As such it makes sense to disinfect things directly to remove the infectious agent quicker most of the time. Therefore thing are are being actively disinfected have less need for copper but items such as
bed rails, call buttons, touch plates, chairs, door handles, light switches, etc
are moving to copper. Items that can be replaced quickly and are highly infectious (Scapels for instance.) are just replaced.
| [
"Since copper surfaces kill pathogenic microbes, architects who design public facilities, such as hospitals and mass transit facilities, look to copper products as a public health benefit. In recent years, copper countertops, range hoods, sinks, handles, doorknobs, faucets, and furniture embellishments have become ... |
Last September a big meteorite hit the Moon, appearing as flash visible to the naked eye. If the moon has negligible atmosphere, what is the combustive agent that caused the flash? | There might be even combustion involved, if the impactor carried the ingredients, but it's enough if you can get a portion of the surface very hot. And a half-ton chunk travelling at 60 000 km/h can. When sufficiently hot (upwards from about 750K), anything will radiate in the visible spectrum. _URL_0_ | [
"During a meteor shower said to be the most spectacular in 10,000 years, an asteroid hidden by the meteor field strikes the Moon. Fragments of the asteroid and of the Moon itself penetrate Earth's atmosphere and make impact. The initial damage is minimal, though significant physical damage to the lunar surface can ... |
I understand that Curiosity is a huge deal for its research capabilities.....But why is everyone going crazy over landing a robot on Mars when we already have had a few rovers do just that? What am I missing? | It's a completely new method of landing vehicles, Curiosity is vastly larger than the existing rovers, and considering we landed something completely autonomously on a different planet, with a 30 minute delay between being able to send a signal and receive a confirmation of receipt, I think people are rightfully pretty impressed. | [
"On December 20, 2013, NASA reported that \"Curiosity\" has successfully upgraded, for the third time since landing, its software programs and is now operating with version 11. The new software is expected to provide the rover with better robotic arm and autonomous driving abilities. Due to wheel wear, a concern to... |
ssd capacity affects performance? | Yes, surprisingly. Bigger capacity translates to more storage chips, and that translates to greater parallelism in transfering data. Thus, faster performance for the big boys :) | [
"NAND performance is improving faster than HDDs, and applications for HDDs are eroding. In 2018, the largest hard drive had a capacity of 15TB while the largest capacity SSD had a capacity of 30.72TB and HDDs are not expected to reach 100TB capacities until somewhere around 2025. Smaller form factors, 1.8-inches an... |
Is there an official time/clock by which all other clocks are set? | In the United States, the official time is kept by National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] Time and Frequency Division. The official clock is the [NIST-F2](_URL_0_) in Boulder, Colorado.
There are different time standards kept internationally since there is the standard length of the second, and there is the length of the year which varies as celestial orbits are not perfect. The time kept by atomic clocks is known as International Atomic Time whereas Coordinate Universal Time is tied to the rotation of the earth and adds leap seconds to match up the International Atomic Time with the Earth's time. | [
"Before clocks were invented, it was common practice to mark the time of day with apparent solar time (also called \"true\" solar time) – for example, the time on a sundial – which was typically different for every location and dependent on longitude.\n",
"Some clocks have several displays driven by a single mech... |
How is thin layer chromatography able to separate two different nucleotides such as ADP and ATP? | All types of chromatography depend on the difference in affinities your analytes have with the stationary phase (in TLC the solid) and the mobile phase (in TLC, the solvent). Knowing the molecular differences between the analytes you are trying to separate can help you design a proceedure that will effectively separate the two compounds. In TLC, the solubility of your analyte in the solvent will compete with the affinity to the stationary phase binding areas. I don't work with TLC specifically (mostly HPLC) but knowing that ADP has one less phosphate group than ATP, I would expect separation to occur from this difference. There would be a difference in polarity since ATP has an extra -OH group and a P=O group. Maybe a solid phase of Si-OH might provide enough separation with the right solvent? Chromatography can be a lot of guess and check work. Hope this helped. | [
"Thin-layer chromatography (TLC) is a widely employed laboratory technique used to separate different biochemicals on the basis of their relative attractions to the stationary and mobile phases. It is similar to paper chromatography. However, instead of using a stationary phase of paper, it involves a stationary ph... |
Were there any documented American volunteers in the Napoleonic wars? | According to Elting's Swords Around A Throne, the régiments étrangers had some Americans but did not mention any specific Americans. I believe that there were some Loyalist Americans fighting for the British in Spain but I lack the sources of that. | [
"Edward Baynes (1768–1829), was an officer in the British Army. He served, mainly in staff roles, during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. However, he is best known for serving as one of the principal staff officers in British North America during the War of 1812 between Britain and the United Stat... |
physiologically, why is it easier to throw something accurately underhand vs overhand? | The overhand throw involves a much more complex set of motions using several joints and a lot of different muscles. There's more to get wrong. | [
"When employing an overhand pass (hands separated, ball handled with the fingers) as the second of three team touches (usually with the intent of \"setting\" the ball, so that the other player may make a more effective attack-hit), the standard for a \"double contact\" fault is more lenient than when receiving or a... |
did native americans have land and borders | Many tribes did not have the same type of personal land ownership concepts that Europeans did (though some did, particularly those that built cities) but virtually all of them had the concept of territorial control by the tribe, had defined borders, and had wars with other tribes for access to resources (such as hunting grounds) or for intruding on their holy lands. | [
"Indian Territory, also known as the Indian Territories and the Indian Country, was land within the United States of America reserved for the forced re-settlement of Native Americans. Therefore, it was not a traditional territory for the tribes settled upon it. The general borders were set by the Indian Intercourse... |
How does a Neutron Star remain stable when a neutron itself is very unstable? | A free neutron has a short half life, however neutrons in the nucleus of an atom are stable. A similar effect happens in a Neutron star. Essentially the neutron is only unstable when it is by itself. | [
"As the core of a massive star is compressed during a Type II supernova, Type Ib or Type Ic supernova, and collapses into a neutron star, it retains most of its angular momentum. But, because it has only a tiny fraction of its parent's radius (and therefore its moment of inertia is sharply reduced), a neutron star ... |
Families of soldiers today receive life insurance and/or a pension if the soldier dies in combat. What sort of compensation, if any, could the family of an ancient Roman soldier expect upon a soldiers death on the battlefield? | Roman soldiers were forbidden to marry during their active service; the ban was only lifted in the year 197 CE by the emperor Septimius Severus. So although soldiers had liaisons with local women while on duty, they really didn't have families. You could have informal marriages at times, but these were unofficial (they could be made official upon leaving service), and any children produced were considered illegitimate.
There is a whole book about the soldiers' marriage prohibition: _URL_2_
_URL_5_
_URL_0_
Note that ancient Romans really never had the concept of life insurance. There were "burial societies" that provided funeral expenses, and some mutual-aid societies, but no life insurance.
There also was really no formalized pension system, as most people died young, and being a senior citizen was not truly considered a formal stage of life. However, the concept of annuity contracts (*annuae*) that you could pay into did exist.
_URL_4_
_URL_3_
_URL_1_ | [
"In the permanent garrisons of the Empire, a portion of each soldier's pay was set aside and pooled for funeral expenses, including the ritual meal, the burial, and commemoration. Soldiers who died of illness or an accident during the normal routines of life would have been given the same rites as in civilian life.... |
How "sudden" was the fall of Rome? | It was a long and gradual crumbling in regards to the Western Empire. Though before I go into why its so complicated I am going to touch on the Eastern Roman Empire, The Byzantines. In 330, to help control the empire a bit easier, Constantine moved the seat of the empire to Constantinople, as more wealth now resided there instead of Rome. While the empire had already existed under the four man rule known as the tetrachy the moving of the capital to Constantinople is considered to be the birth of the "Eastern Roman Empire"...this particular empire, who considered themselves to be very much Roman, existed until 1453.
Anyway, with that out of the way, on to the crumbling of Western Rome. I say crumbling because there was no sudden death of the empire, some can argue that the sacking of Rome in either 455 or 546 by Germanic Barbarian Kings to be the final nail in the coffin, but the empire was so weak by that point it barely controlled Italy..
So this is what happened. As the West hit this barrier of Oceans, deserts and very hard to conquer Germans in the mid 4th century....they ran out of things to conquer so things sort of stagnated in the west but as glory in war was a good way to gain prestige in the Empire they still sent troops to the borders, to be stationed at forts under garrison commanders.(The East however was a plentiful source of conflict and many generals and emperors focused their attention there after proving themselves in the north west.)
These commanders(the ones in the north west) soon learned that in order to keep their position and town(Garrisons usually had a small town built up around them that housed any number of people) safe they had to make nice with the locals, usually these barbarians. In order to do this they had to help the barbarians in war or have the barbarians help them in war, which earned their respect and friendship through gift giving and loot. They would also intermarry with the warlords daughters and merge the families of themselves and these warlords together...At the same time, the soldiers themselves would sometimes marry the women of these tribes, further integrating the two groups together. Overtime, Between the mid 4th century and the mid 6th century, money ran out in the urban centers in Italy and southern Gaul as these commanders and warlords started to command high levels of power, so power in the west shifted towards the urban centers to the frontier and these new powerful Roman/German warlords. With that power went wealth, so the urban centers basically ran out of money, so there was no reason to stay there. This coupled with the shifting attention to the east meant that power in Italy was becoming much lower then it had been in previous centuries.
Without a centralized government to keep order, the road system and trade collapsed in the 5th century by way of lack of maintenance, so even more of the urban centers became deserted and the population shifted back towards agriculture. Well, these farmers needed protection from these warlords, so they would align themselves with another warlord (sound familiar? That's because its the baby steps of the system eventually labeled as feudalism much later) and would give them food and military service in exchange for protection..
After two centuries of the power, military and economic shift towards the frontier Rome was basically left as the seat of the Bishop of Rome (The Pope) and nothing more. Without a military to protect it, the city was sacked in 455 by a Germanic king called Genseric..but the sack was pretty tame without any real looting, burning and killing. The German just sort of claimed Rome and that was about when most historians mark the end of the Empire in the west...
I am of the mind however, that the actual end comes around the mid 6th century (540-554) when Justinian, an Eastern Roman Emperor who wanted to reclaim the old Empire, marched into Italy and ravaged it...but was unable for economic reasons to conquer Rome and left what was left of the empire beaten and bloody, allowing more Germanic barbarians (who were now actual cultures and groups, such as the Franks, Goths and Ostrogoths) to march right back and sieze the area without any issue.
So there you go. The collapse and fall is really more of a gradual crumbling as power, wealth and military strength fell into independent Roman Military officers and warlords on the frontier..until the city eventually fell several times in the 5th and 6th centuries. The Western Empire had ups and downs but after Constantine shifted the center of power to Constantinople in the early 4th century, the region slid downhill.
Though the ancestors of these barbarians, the nobles and kings of Europe, would hold the idea of the Emperor and the Empire in extremely high regard, what they would strive for if given the opportunity (hence the name, Holy Roman Empire, which wasn't really Roman but was very powerful symbol in the right hands)
Edit-Looking back over it, and thinking it over after Tiako's critique, I am changed the usage of the term general to fort commander or garrison leaders, it fits better. Also added years, centuries and a bit more specific information. | [
"After some 1200 years of independence and nearly 700 years as a great power, the rule of Rome in the West ended. Various reasons for Rome's fall have been proposed ever since, including loss of Republicanism, moral decay, military tyranny, class war, slavery, economic stagnation, environmental change, disease, the... |
what would be different about the way the sun rises and sets if the earth was not tilted on an axis? | If the axis was at 90 degrees relative to the orbital plane the sun would set and rise as it does on the equinox so just like on March 20 in and September 22-23. So just look out next Friday.
The equinox is the day that the equator lines up with the orbital plane twice per year. So the sun rises due east and set due west on every part of the earth. with the day and night of equal length.
The exact due east, west and equal day and night is if you ignore the atmospheric effect that is relatively small in most places. The day is 12 hours and 6 minutes at the equator but at the poles, the sun will be above the horizon the whole day. The only sunrise on the north pole is 2 day before the march equinox and the only sunset is 2 days after the September equinox, for the south pole it is the opposite.
So just like the equinox. The real huge effect would be the enormous changes in climate with no winter and summer. | [
"From a vantage point above the north pole of either the Sun or Earth, Earth would appear to revolve in a counterclockwise direction around the Sun. From the same vantage point, both the Earth and the Sun would appear to rotate also in a counterclockwise direction about their respective axes.\n",
"Earth's axis re... |
Did Settlers of the Americas convert to Native Religions in Sizable Numbers? | To my knowledge, no not very common. There may have been cases but those people would most likely would have lived with the Native Americans instead of mainstream colonial society. Christianity (the various protestant groups in the British colonies and Catholicism in the French and Spanish Colonies) was a very pervasive part of life. In fact the colonial missions where a central part of many European colonies. As more or less "civilizing the heathens." Powers such as the Spanish where quite dedicated to eliminating native religion and conversion to Catholicism to the point of destroying and looting religious sites. While in the British colonies and later United States, there was a great degree of interdenominational toleration for its time, there was still a massive stigma to non-christian religion. | [
"During the European colonization of the Americas, forced conversion of the continents' indigenous, non-Christian population was common, especially in South America and Mesoamerica, where the conquest of large indigenous polities like the Inca and Aztec Empires placed colonizers in control of large non-Christian po... |
Is it possible to come to a dead stop in space? | It would have to be a "full stop" relative to some other object. | [
"However, a mistake repairing a malfunctioning computing device causes them to miss their rendezvous, first with Mars, then with Jupiter. No other planet whose gravity could halt their outward flight (their solar sail can only propel them away from the Sun) is within reach. Belt dismantled their radio and the box o... |
If you boil a liter of water and contain the steam long enough for it to condensate, will there still be one liter of water? | If you didn't let any steam escape, then yes, there will be one litre left.
By the way, it's _condense_. Condensate is a noun, and it refers to the product of condensation (so steam forms a condensate on a cold surface). | [
"A greater quantity of steam can be generated from a given quantity of water by superheating it. As the fire is burning at a much higher temperature than the saturated steam it produces, far more heat can be transferred to the once-formed steam by superheating it and turning the water droplets suspended therein int... |
What happens to the bone structure when plates, screws, and pins are are removed from a damaged bone? | The plate and screws are there to hold a fracture together which represents significant structural problems. They hold it still for the bone to repair it’s self and once the hardware is removed yes there will be several small holes left in the bone but they do not significantly impact the integrity of the bone and will be able to heal themselves over time | [
"When a bone is fractured as a result of an injury, the two fragments may be displaced relative to each other. If they are not, usually no treatment is required other than immobilisation in an appropriate cast. If displacement does occur, then the space separating the fragments fills with blood shed by the damaged ... |
When Shakespeare's plays were first performed, was the average theater goer able to sufficiently understand the dialog to be able to follow the plot and understand the character's motivations? | This is a complicated question to answer -- I don't think it can be a simple yes or no.
There are certainly parts of Shakespeare's work that anyone would understand, then or now. Especially in the lighter comedies. When Helena says "use me but as your spaniel" in Midsummer while waggling her butt at Demetrius, everyone knows what she is referring to. This effect is amplified through intense poetic repetition that whole speech goes like this:
Helena--
I am your spaniel. And, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.
Use me but as your spaniel—spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me. Only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love—
And yet a place of high respect with me—
Than to be usèd as you use your dog?
All the audience really needs to get from this speech is Helena loves Demetrius like a dog loves his master. There's nothing really very complicated there. This effect is further amplified by the actions onstage. Anyone who has seen this speech in a production will instantly understand it. Helena is fawning over Demetrius, desperately pretending to be a dog to gain his love. The action on stage would have made the meaning of the lines quite obvious.
Not all of Shakespeare's works are so easy to follow though. Take Titus Andronicus for example. The first act of Titus is extremely difficult to follow -- so many characters are introduced (a few who die immediately) and plot points fly by with a speed that makes it hard to believe that audiences could follow. While audiences might not remember that Alarbus is the name of the son of Tamora who Titus sacrifices to the Roman gods, they would certainly get the gist of the idea because Tamora repeatedly mentions the wrong done to her throughout the rest of the play. Titus Andronicus is a lot like Taken (the Liam Neeson movie), except the 10 minutes of exposition is actually 25 minutes and incredibly confusing. It wouldn't matter if Elizabethan audiences would have understood exactly what happened in the first act, because the repetition throughout the rest of the play makes it impossible to avoid -- and in the end Titus is all about blood and explosions. In fact, Titus Andronicus (often called his worst play) is the work that launched his career and was his most popular in the day.
This is a roundabout way of saying the answer is complicated. I think it would be naive to say that audiences of the time understood everything, but anyone who is really familiar with Shakespeare's work will tell you that the staging of a play and the way Shakespeare uses poetry (especially repetition) to reinforce plot points makes it very hard to leave the theatre without at least an idea of what was going on.
Sources: John Basil, artistic director of American Globe Theatre's Shakespeare lectures -- I've been producing, directing and acting in Shakespeare's work for 5+ years
Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt might be a good read for you too. It doesn't answer this question per se, but it has a lot of information about contemporary literary criticism of his work. | [
"Since then, several editors and critics of theater began to focus on the dramatic text and the language of Shakespeare, creating a study that focused on extracting all the power of his literary texts, being used in studies on the printed page rather than in the theater. This attitude reached a high point with the ... |
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