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Just how close were the Greeks to taking Constantinople after WWI? Also could they have kept it? | Not very close. The Greek campaign was mostly focused in the Anatolian plateau, and Constantinople wasn't a serious war goal. The real war goals was consolidation over the lands granted by the [Treaty of Sèvres](_URL_2_), Constantinople was just revanchist rhetoric. Although the Greek Campaign made some surprisingly successful headway initially, they were fighting a war against a much more numerous, better led, more determined enemy on the home turf of said enemy. Yes, the Turks were wounded, dogged and tired from the First World War, but the Greeks were pretty arrogant in thinking they could seize the Aegean Coast and Thrace from Turkey even with the deficits it had at the time. Seizing Constantinople as well would've required intervention from either God or Alien Space Bats, probably both.
Nonetheless, if the Greeks *did* capture Constantinople, I doubt they would've kept it. The Turks would basically keep fighting to regain it till the last man, as its their largest city, and their cultural and economic capital. International observers would probably disapprove of it as well, as even the unnecessarily harsh Treaty of Sèvres only went so far as to stipulate the demilitarisation of Constantinople. Though the whether or not the Greeks manage to control Constantinople is heavily dependent on the how/if they win the war against the Turks, how other countries react and basically anything else that happens in this alternate universe of Greek Constantinople. I suggest you take a wander on down to [_URL_1_](_URL_0_). | [
"Following the loss of Alexandria and Antioch to the Arabs, Thessaloniki became the Byzantine Empire's second largest city, called the \"co-regent\" (\"symbasileuousa\"), second only to Constantinople. The Greek peninsula remained one of the strongest centers of Christianity in the late Roman and early Byzantine pe... |
how is produce transported internationally without wilting or spoiling? | There are climate controlled shipping containers called "reefers," and the process by which they were developed for use involved a team traveling inside them around the globe for quite some time-at least a year. I forget the specifics, but there's an interesting [episode of "99% Invisible,"](_URL_0_) a really great podcast, about this. | [
"All material resources were subjected to requisitioning. Farmers surrendered their grain, fodder, wool, flax, and hemp. Artisans and merchants gave up their manufactured products. Raw materials were carefully sought out – metal of all kinds, church bells, old paper, rags and parchments, grasses, brushwood, and eve... |
why are my old smartphones (2013) so slow today doing simple stuff like photos and internet browsing when it could run playstation 3 graphics games with ease? | Planned Obsolescence.
_URL_0_
Basically, if you make the perfect product, then people would not need to replace or buy a new version.
However, if you ensure that your product degrades over time, then you'll force your customers to make repeat purchases.
| [
"The web browser included in the PlayStation 4 console is based on the open source WebKit layout engine, unlike the PlayStation 3 which uses the NetFront browser. Using the same modern Webkit core as Safari from Apple, the PS4 web browser receives a very high score in HTML5 compliance testing. However, it does not ... |
Under normal atmospheric conditions, can liquid water be heated above 212F or cooled below 32F and remain liquid? | This depends on what you mean by "normal atmospheric conditions". If you mean "at one atmosphere", then no (with the temporary exceptions provided by u/Chemomechanics). If you mean "at atmospheric conditions found at some point on the surface of the Earth, including places like the top of a mountain or bottom of a valley below mean sea level", then yes.
At exactly one atmosphere (the average pressure at sea level), liquid water will spontaneously boil at temperatures above 100 degC (212 degF) and spontaneously freeze at temperatures below 0 degC (32 degF). At higher pressures (lower in the atmosphere than sea level, such as in Death Valley), water will boil at higher temperatures and freeze at lower temperatures. At lower pressures (higher in the atmosphere, such as on mountains), water will boil at lower temperatures and freeze at higher temperatures. If you push this far enough (to 273.16 K (0.010 °C; 32.018 °F) and 0.00603659 atm), you can get water to both boil and freeze at the same time. | [
"For example, water has a critical temperature of , which is the highest temperature at which liquid water can exist. In the atmosphere at ordinary temperatures, therefore, gaseous water (known as water vapor) will condense into a liquid if its partial pressure is increased sufficiently.\n",
"Liquid water and ice... |
If the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, how can we see distant galaxies? | 1. Stuff we can see: its not currently moving away from us faster than the speed of light (obviously). This is the 'observable universe' which is 46.6 *billion light years across.
2. Stuff we can't see but will one day: as its light has time to reach us. It will account for some percentage of the actual universe, but not a lot.
3. Stuff we will never see: already so far away space between us will expand faster than light can travel through it.
It's the third group that's the interesting one. That's the part of the universe that shall remain hidden from us forever. Light emanating from the far reaches will never, ever, find us. And that's where most of the stuff is. The 'universe' is big, like really big, at least hundreds of times bigger than what we can see. Potentially it is so much bigger you couldn't hold the number in your head or your brain would collapse into a black hole.
| [
"This puzzle has a bearing on the question of whether light from distant galaxies can ever reach us given the metric expansion of space. The universe is expanding, which leads to increasing distances to other galaxies, and galaxies that are far enough away from us will have an apparent relative motion greater than ... |
what's epistemological anarchism? | Think about Back to the Future.
"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads"
The idea is that a lot of significant scientific progress was made while ignoring the accepted ways of understanding and studying science (the road)
Newton showed where Aristotle's road came up short and built a new one that was better. Similarly, Einstein built a better road than Newton. Basically if there's a scientist/physicist whose name you recognize, they probably ignored the road and built a better one.
So if you want to advance science, get off the road of established and "proven" methods, because off the road is where the undiscovered things are where you can build a better road to. | [
"Epistemological anarchism is an epistemological theory advanced by Austrian philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend which holds that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge. It holds that the idea of the operation of science by fixed, ... |
How did the concept of "fandom" emerge? Is it a 20th century phenomena or does it have a longer historical legacy? | I'm going to recycle most of an older answer for this one:
Many of the contemporary characteristics of what we consider fandom - where communities of fans correspond, argue, contribute to group projects, create derivative art and fiction, explore the world and share information with each other - began during the 1930s with the science fiction pulps. This is several decades later than the emergence of "fans" as a concept, since in the 1890s you had Sherlock Holmes readers holding demonstrations when Holmes was killed and writing fanfiction, but even the Sherlockians didn't really organize in the contemporary sense until the 1930s when the Sherlock Holmes Society and Baker Street Irregulars were founded. "Fandom" before the 1930s was just very disorganized and difficult to distinguish.
Sam Moskowitz in "The Origins of Science Fiction Fandom: A Reconstruction" in [Science Fiction Fandom](_URL_4_) and [The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom](_URL_0_) traces the origins to the letter columns or "reader's departments" of early magazines that ran science fiction like *Argosy* - the move of editor Robert Hobart Davis. These departments allowed fans to write-in, giving praise, criticism, and asking questions - and on occasion leading to arguments (a 23-year-old H. P. Lovecraft famously got involved in one such tiff in *Argosy*, which led to a months-long war in the letters column) - and, basically to allow fans to actually *interact* both with the magazine and, to an extant, with each other.
This led to a certain amount of familiarity - especially in magazines like *Weird Tales*, whose letter section "The Eyrie" regularly featured many of the same fans, as well as pulp writers who featured in the magazine itself - and of course, many fans made the jump from fan to pro, and many of the writers for *Weird Tales* began to associate, either personally or through letters - but fandom itself didn't really get organized just yet...although there were some parallel developments. "Amateur journalism" - which consisted of small journals, papers, and magazines produced in small numbers for limited circulation among contributors, who were almost uniformly non-professional writers from all walks of life and levels of education or literary gift, had attained sufficient popularity by the 1910s that there were two national-level organizations (the National Amateur Press Association and the United Amateur Press Association) with annual dues, official organs, national conventions, elections, bylaws, etc. There were innumerable smaller organizations and periodicals, like the "tribe papers" of the Lone Scouts (a Boy Scout alternative for kids and teenagers in rural areas too far away from others to form troops that met on a regular basis), which were conducted by correspondence and produced relatively cheaply with hand presses, spirit printing, mimeograph, hectograph, etc.
In 1926, Hugo Gernsback brought out *Amazing Stories*, a new "scientifiction" magazine - the first devoted entirely to scientifiction - and to help run the magazine he brought on "two scientifiction experts," Wilbur C. Whitehead and C. A. Brandt - fans that went pro as literary editors, first readers, and book reviewers for Gernsback's magazines. As a matter of policy, Gernsback used the letter columns of his magazines to encourage the creation of fan groups. As Moskowitz quotes in *Science Fiction Fandom* 28, Gernsback wrote in the [Summer 1929 issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly](_URL_3_):
> We make a great point of our "Discussions" columns in *Amazing Stories* and of those corresponding columns in the *Quarterly* edition. It puts our readers in a position to correspond with each other and makes the formation of a readers' club very easy....The point we wish to make is that our correspondents must organize the club, recognizing that we are interested in it, and will be, in the future when it takes shape, delighted to give its progress space in our columns.
The first actual fandom clubs of this sort in the United States were the Science Correspondence Club and the Golden Gate Scientific Association, which both formed in 1928 and followed some of the basic forms of amateur journalism as far as contributing to common papers, sharing news, insights, and their own fiction. The first of these was *The Comet*, a ten-paged mimeographed pamhplet produced by the Science Correspondence Club in May 1930; by the third issue it was renamed *Cosmology*. Other clubs began producing their own official organs, and the proliferation of clubs and papers gets complicated quickly.
Some fans even began producing their own semi-prozines for sale among the ardent group of science fiction fans - these included *Marvel Tales*, *The Science-Fantasy Correspondent*, *The Phantagraph*, and *The Fantasy Fan* - the latter the first semi-prozine dedicated specifically to weird fiction; these 'zines were often individual efforts by independent fans rather than associated with a particular organization, and attracted quite a bit of talent - H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, August Derleth, and David H. Keller all contributed essays, letters, short fiction, and poetry to these magazines, for example, and their editors - like Julius Schwartz and Charles Hornig - went on to be agents and editors for professional pulps like *Wonder Stories* and for the nascent DC Comics.
Those clubs and 'zines were basically the origin of a lot of what we think of as "fandom" today. The first World Fantasy Convention was held in New York City in 1939; one of the first efforts at encyclopedic nailing-down of minutae was the *Fancyclopedia* produced by the Fantasy Amateur Press Asssociation in 1944 - and which is still being continued [today](_URL_2_), and is full of specialized fan-lingo.
That being said, there are a few things that took a while to be "mainstreamed" into fandom, as it were. Erotic fanfiction starring Cthulhu or Conan the Cimmerian didn't exist in the 1930s (trust me, I've looked) - but "Tijuana bibles," the crudely-produced, illicit, sexually explicit comics of the 1930s and 40s often featured popular actors, actresses, politicians, and cartoon characters (everyone from Little Orphan Annie and Mickey Mouse to Buck Rodgers). These kind of erotic fanworks didn't really start to penetrate the amateur press associations (as a lot of fan groups evolved into) until about the 1960s and 70s. Even then, it had a very limited circulation; and erotic parodies of popular works by fans really started to emerge in the underground comix scene around the same time period - which led to some clashes with copyright holders.
Some radio serials and early television programs aimed at children went one better than Gernsback or the radio serials programs in the 30s and 40s by forming their own "official" fan groups, to help control their image - and when that image was threatened, as when the Air Pirates comix group created a pornographic parody of Mickey Mouse in 1971, the companies could take action. [Disney sued - and won](_URL_1_). I can't say that this was the *first* antagonistic action between a fan group and a creator, but it's one of the hallmarks of the era. | [
"Merriam-Webster, the Oxford dictionary and other sources define \"fan\" as a shortened version of the word \"fanatic\". \"Fanatic\" itself, introduced into English around 1550, means \"marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion\". It comes from the Modern Latin \"fanaticus\", meaning \"in... |
Realistically, how bad is it that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has passed 400 parts per million? | I'm much too tired to give a full answer (basically, if CO2 emissions stopped right now, it wouldn't be so bad; or, with trends continuing indefinitely, the collapse of global society can be considered "unlikely").
As regards CO2 fertilisation, that does help to a degree - ~0.5-1 C above pre-industrial corresponds to projected net increases in crop productivity - but carbon dioxide supply usually isn't the limiting factor in plant growth. So that increase is only very slight, and once you get past it you see decreased yields due to issues with water, temperature and so on. | [
"BULLET::::- The global concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere reaches 350 ppm (parts per million) by volume. The level of 350ppm is regarded by James Hansen as the maximum permissible level that will avoid a climate tipping point.\n",
"350 parts per million is what scientists, climate experts, and... |
why americans use drywall instead of concrete and bricks to build houses in areas prone to natural disasters? | The only natural disaster that concrete and brick houses are better at dealing with are fires.
With tornadoes most damage is done by winds so strong that they dismantle concrete, brick, or stone either directly or by throwing debris into them only slightly more slowly than they do wood. You can make a tornado bunker that is above ground with 4 foot thick walls and steel reinforcement. Homes do not do that, even in places that they make concrete homes.
Hurricanes tend to do most of their damage with flooding. Concrete and Bricks flood and mold just as easily as wood. When they are washed away the ground itself is washed away so they break just as easily too. For the extremely powerful hurricanes we have the same wind issues as tornadoes.
For earthquakes the concrete and brick homes are far worse than wood. They are too rigid unless very expensive tech and building practices are used and so they just crumble when an earthquake happens as they cannot flex.
And finally they are 3-10 times more expensive than wooden homes. Chances of you actually losing your home in your lifetime are low, and you get insurance to protect against it. So it is far better for most to spend what money they have to build a larger nicer home.
Also you seem to think drywall is a structural weight bearing material. It is not. It is the interior finishing of the wall. Wood is the structural component and wood/fiberglass is the outdoor wall slat. | [
"Drywall was imported by the United States during the construction boom between 2004 and 2007, spurred by a shortage of American-made drywall due to the rebuilding demand of nine hurricanes that hit Florida from 2004 to 2005, and widespread damage caused along the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.\n",
"Unt... |
After the disaster at Gettysburg, why did the confederate soldiers still hold Robert E Lee in such high esteem? | First off, let me begin by saying that Lee didn't want a long, drawn out confrontation at Gettysburg. The reason Lee was roped into battle at Gettysburg is more because of the lack of control in his army and among his subordinates opposed to his tactics. One of the most important things to note for the Confederates at Gettysburg is that the battle began without the presence of J.E.B. Stuart, a famous cavalry officer in the Confederate army.
Stuart had embarked upon a ["wild ride"](_URL_0_) shortly before the outbreak of battle, in what most consider an effort to display his distaste for the Union and its troops. Stuart was a gifted tactical commander, but a notorious wildcard. Without him present during the first day and second morning of battle, Lee was at a significant disadvantage. Secondly, it's worth noting that Stuart had a number of missions to complete on this jaunt of his... which he prioritized over returning to battle with Lee.
In this regard, you can identify that Stuart **did not in fact take an unauthorized jaunt,** but did take his own orders over that of Lee's-- both of which were in admittedly bad timing.
Back to the point, another example of this lack of control was evident when General Longstreet failed to break into Union Lines during an assault on Day 2 of the battle, because of "tardiness in action."
It's said that Lee and Longstreet had a disagreement over whether or not to attack the line, with Lee citing vulnerabilities in the line and Longstreet vehemently objecting to the assault. In the end, Longstreet DID attack... several hours late, when the line had been fortified. Obviously, this did not go well.
To answer your question, finally and directly, Lee was still held in high regard because Lee was not directly blamed for these failings. His tactics, had they been faithfully and dutifully executed, would have likely been enough to either avoid the engagement (I've heard an infantry unit scouted Gettysburg instead of a Cavalry unit, which Lee also objected to) or manage a win over Union forces. It's because of Lee's tactical ability, thinking capability, and charisma that he is considered a great general in the first place.
As the saying goes, "you don't blame the man with charisma, he blames you." | [
"When Confederate forces retreated from Gettysburg, they left behind 5,000 wounded soldiers. These were treated by many of Dix's nurses. Union nurse Cornelia Hancock wrote about the experience: \"There are no words in the English language to express the suffering I witnessed today...\"\n",
"Edward \"Allegheny\" J... |
why do we ride horses and donkeys but not cows or sheep? (sheep would be comfy, i imagine.) | Two reasons
1- Physiology. Horses are relatively easy to mount and control with the reins. Cows are very wide and while you can mount them for a time (rodeo) they are uncomfortable to ride for extended periods of time.
2 - Social structure. Horses have a hierarchy. You break the lead horse and the rest of the horses see you as the new leader. Cows don't generally have such a defined hierarchy. If you manage to tame the biggest bull, other bulls will just keep challenging you.
Not to mention that we most likely domesticated horses first and they are much faster than cows. | [
"There are also some steers not used in rodeo who have been trained not to buck and instead are gentled to be ridden. Most people who have trained their cattle to be ridden have used them to perform similar tasks which horses perform, such as trail riding, jumping, and running. However, they do require different ma... |
why do mental health issues like depression, anxiety and adhd appear to be increasing exponentially year on year? | The rate in increase isn't exponential.
But as the rate of awareness increases the rate of diagnosis increases also.
I.E.: People always died of cancer, but if we didn't know cancer existed we can't diagnosis cancer. | [
"Concurrent with increased multitasking in the workforce and the subsequent rise in productivity and just multitasking in general, the literature has witnessed progressively more reports of increased stress, loss of focus, symptoms resembling attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and even lowering of IQ.\... |
why streets have ave, blvd, and all the other endings to it (u.s. user) | From the video link posted:
Road (Rd.): Can be anything that connects two points. The most basic of the naming conventions.
Way: A small side street off a road.
Street (St.): A public way that has buildings on both sides of it. They run perpendicular to avenues.
Avenue (Ave.): Also a public way that has buildings or trees on either side of it. They run perpendicular to streets.
Boulevard (Blvd.): A very wide city street that has trees and vegetation on both sides of it. There’s also usually a median in the middle of boulevards.
Lane (Ln.): A narrow road often found in a rural area. Basically, the opposite of a boulevard.
Drive (Dr.): A long, winding road that has its route shaped by its environment, like a nearby lake or mountain.
Terrace (Ter.): A street that follows the top of a slope.
Place (Pl.): A road or street that has no throughway—or leads to a dead end.
Court (Ct.): A road or street that ends in a circle or loop | [
"The Richmond District and the neighboring Sunset District (on the south side of Golden Gate Park) are often collectively known as \"The Avenues\", because a majority of both neighborhoods are spanned by numbered north–south avenues. When the city was originally laid out, the avenues were numbered from 1st to 49th ... |
the "higher education bubble" | A bubble refers to a market for a product that is considered overvalued and therefore overpriced. You're paying more than it is actually worth, but because everyone shares an unrealistic overvaluation a "bubble" forms in which people continue to buy the product. When enough people realize that the product is overvaluated, they stop buying; and as demand dries up, the bubble pops, and many are left holding product on which they can never recoup their investment.
There's a current theory that the value of higher education is disproportionate to what you'll earn as a result of buying it. In other words, an insufficient return on investment. This is a much-debated proposition with some valid arguments on both sides and a lot of emotional arguments clouding the debate. | [
"The higher education bubble in the United States is a claim that excessive investment in higher education could have negative repercussions in the broader economy. According to the claim generally associated with fiscal conservatives while college tuition payments are rising, the supply of college graduates in man... |
Why are smaller animals generally able to survive high falls with little damage compared to humans? | You and the mouse accelerate exactly the same, at 9.8 m/s^2. Therefore, falling from the same height, you and the mouse would hit the ground at the same speed. This means the mouse caries a FAR lesser momentum than you, since momentum is the product of your mass and velocity. Since your mass is much greater, and the velocity is the same, your momentum is much greater.
The change in momentum can be approximately stated as the product of Force and time. Since the amount of time you guys are slowed down by the impact is the same, and since a much greater change in momentum must be delivered to you to stop you, you must experience a MUCH greater force than the mouse does.
Since the force on lesser mass organisms is much less than greater mass organisms, they're able to survive equally high falls much more easily if they have the same structural rigidity/ resilience. | [
"Terminal velocity is higher for larger creatures, and thus potentially more deadly. A creature such as a mouse falling at its terminal velocity is much more likely to survive impact with the ground than a human falling at its terminal velocity. A small animal such as a cricket impacting at its terminal velocity wi... |
how is it that political movements often gather tremendous momentum only to fizzle and die completely? | Most of the people joining these kinds of political movements are just doing it because it's the flavor of the month. It sounds cool, being a part of it makes them feel better than their peers, and it gives them something to do. They don't really understand the issue and they are in it for their own personal satisfaction rather than the movement itself.
Once enough people join the movement, it stops being cool. They have to go join some other up and coming movement. When they do that, the previous one fizzles out. | [
"Mass movements that succeed in causing radical change often exceed in brutality the former regime that the mass movement opposed. The Bolsheviks in Russia and the Jacobins in France ostensibly formed in reaction to the oppression of their respective monarchies but proved themselves far more vicious and brutal in o... |
why is obama removing cuba from the terrorist list? why has no one else done this before? | They really never warranted being on the list in the first place, so it makes sense from a factual perspective. However, it is move that offends conservative/Republican types so it took a Democractic president with a set of balls to actually have Cuba taken off. | [
"On 14 April 2015, the Obama administration announced that Cuba would be removed from the United States \"State Sponsors of Terrorism\" list. The House and Senate had 45 days from 14 April 2015 to review and possibly block this action, but this did not occur, and on 29 May 2015, the 45 days lapsed, therefore offici... |
If we can create synthetic elements, why can't we reproduce the ones that already exist? | We can reproduce common elements, but it isn't cost-effective to do so. For instance, we can irradiate mercury with neutrons and transform it into gold. But the cost of the whole process doesn't make it worthwhile.
So-called "synthetic" elements are ones that don't exist in nature, and are usually unstable. The reason we don't see them is *because* they are unstable - they have all decayed away in the billions of years between their creation in a supernova and us looking for them. | [
"A synthetic element is one of 24 chemical elements that do not occur naturally on Earth: they have been created by human manipulation of fundamental particles in a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator, or detonation of an atomic bomb; and thus are called \"synthetic\", \"artificial\", or \"man-made\". The synth... |
how does 60 fps playback on youtube work even with content captured at 30 fps? | As far as I know, the frames are just doubled. Do you have a video example that was captured at 30fps but uploaded to YT at 60fps? They might also be adding interpolation between frames to smooth it out, but I seem to remember seeing a comparison video back when 60fps came out showing that the frames were just being doubled.
Are you sure the original video was captured at 30fps? | [
"In the case of filmed material, as 120 is an even multiple of 24, it is possible to present a 24 fps sequence without judder on a well-designed 120 Hz display (i.e., so-called 5-5 pulldown). If the 120 Hz rate is produced by frame-doubling a 60 fps 3:2 pulldown signal, the uneven motion could still be visible (i.e... |
how do you quickly test water quality? | If it comes down to life or death: dying of dehydration or ingesting a little carcinogens go for the long term killer.
The absolute best indicator is wildlife. Watch for that. If you see animals using it as a drinking source it's cool. If you see it is surrounded by dead animals best leave it alone. If there is healthy vegitation growing around it-good. It looks like a portal to the underworld surrounded by death and decay-bad.
Take a few drops, put it on the back of your hand or armpit or groin wait half an hour. Check for redness, swelling or any indicators that it might be a bad idea swim in. Drink a little bit wait half an hour. If you are fine it is good. If you get sick don't continue to drink. | [
"There are several practical ways of checking water quality, the most direct being some measure of attenuation (that is, reduction in strength) of light as it passes through a sample column of water. The alternatively used Jackson Candle method (units: Jackson Turbidity Unit or JTU) is essentially the inverse measu... |
how do blackholes 'bend' time? | Not just black holes, but anything with gravity "bends" time to some extent.
First you need to know what time dilation is (no gravity involved yet).
The important thing to remember here is that the speed of light (in a vacuum) is always the same.
Imagine a simple type of clock, a beam of light bouncing between to equally spaced mirrors.
*****
|
|
*****
Since the speed of light is the same, the time it takes to go from the top to the bottom is the same each time, one tick of the clock.
Now imagine this clock is moving:
***** ***** ***** -- >
\ / \ / \
\ / \ / \
***** ***** *****
Since light *always* moves at the same speed, and the diagonal lines are longer, it takes longer for light to go from the top to the bottom, it has longer ticks.
But, what if you are moving at the same speed as the moving mirror?
Then, the light will look like it's going straight up and down again, and since light *always* moves at the same speed, the ticks will be back to their original size!
So if I am on the ground with my own clock, watching you run with your clock, I will see that it takes longer for each tick on your clock compared to my clock. Since both clocks are working properly, I must conclude that time itself is moving slower for you.
Now for the *really* confusing part. From your point of view, light on your clock is moving straight up and down, but the light on my clock has to go backwards diagonally, so you will similarly conclude that time is moving more slowly for me!
And we would both be right! This is why it is called the theory of *relativity*, because the relative point of view you are talking about makes a *huge* difference.
| [
"The time reversal of a black hole would be a hypothetical object known as a white hole. From the outside they appear similar. While a black hole has a beginning and is inescapable, a white hole has an ending and cannot be entered. The forward light-cones of a white hole are directed outward; and its backward light... |
you know, at the art museum, those absurd paintings of giant red squares or giant blue rectangles? what makes them so valuable? why are they so special? | Part of it is the modernist trend toward abstraction. If you think about the work of [Piet Mondrian](_URL_1_), with the famous blue, red, yellow, black & white geometric shapes, what he was doing essentially was boiling down the visual language of painting into what he saw as its essential elements. You saw the same thing earlier with the Impressionists like Monet... instead of giving you a detailed, accurate depiction of a bunch of flowers in a pond, he offered just the colors, vague smudges, tricks of light. He's giving you the elements and then it's your job as the viewer to decide both what the painting represents and also why it matters to you: is it beautiful, does it evoke a memory or a mood, etc.
Rothko is part of that tradition. He gives you these color shapes that vaguely remind you maybe of earth and sky, a horizon. Or maybe just shapes, or just colors. Different colors represent different times of day, perhaps different moods. Rothko himself wanted people to be overwhelmed with emotion (he painted huge canvases, 15 or 20 feet high sometimes). He wanted to evoke feelings if ecstasy, tragedy, death, grief, the feeling of being human and alive, etc. Take a look at "[Black on Grey](_URL_0_)," one of the paintings he made in the last year of his life. I think it definitely conveys drama, perhaps fear, solitude, bleakness.
That's what abstraction is all about: trying to convey emotion or experience with the absolute minimum possible elements. | [
"A black cube (or black box) art museum is a term used by some scholars referring to the type of art museum that is architecturally designed or renovated with special consideration for the particular needs of modern digital art, installation art, and video art. The development of the black box art museums originate... |
How will nuclear fusion produce more electricity than fission when they both extract the energy through heated water? Is there no hard limit to turbines? | as /u/plainoldname said, a hydrogen fusion reaction generates more energy as heat than a uranium fission reaction. This can result in more electricity in one of the following ways:
1.) The same amount of water as in the fission reaction is boiled faster resulting in the turbine spinning faster which results in more electricity generation.
2.) A larger amount of water is boiled in the same amount of time passed through a larger turbine which also results in more electricity generation.
If you have any other questions or need any further clarification feel free to ask. | [
"As a source of power, nuclear fusion is expected to have several theoretical advantages over fission. These include reduced radioactivity in operation and little high-level nuclear waste, ample fuel supplies, and increased safety. However, achieving the necessary temperature/pressure/duration combination has prove... |
what does obama gain from signing the "infinite detention" bill? eli5 | Nothing. The laws are simply being codified and put into one bill. Obama has been capable of doing everything in that bill since his presidency, and every president before Obama up until about WWII had the same power (possibly even before then). | [
"On November 29, 2011, the United States Senate rejected a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (\"NDAA\") that would have banned indefinite detention by the United States government of its own citizens, leading to criticism that the right of \"habeas corpus\" had been u... |
how do online auction sites like quibids and dealdash offer items at "95% off the retail price" and still make a profit? | You have to pay to bid, and that payment is nonrefundable.
For example, when you bid on an item at Quibids, you pay $0.50 to place the bid, the price of the item goes up by $0.01 (hence the name for this type of auction: "penny auction"), and the timer on the auction resets. If the timer reaches zero with no one bidding, it sells to the final bidder.
So let's say that an iPad starts at $0.01, and ultimately sells for $20. That means that people have bid on it 1999 times. At fifty cents a pop, that's $999.50 in nonrefundable bids placed. And the winner has to also pay the $20. So Quibids makes $1019.50 on the iPad that "sold for $20".
The person who won the auction may have gotten the iPad for cheap, but the thousands of other people who paid to bid on it lose money and get nothing. | [
"QuiBids.com is an American online retailer headquartered in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States. It is a retail website that operates as a bidding fee auction, also known as a penny auction. The company has been sued under allegations that it is a form of illegal gambling and that its advertising is misleading.... |
What did Soviet kids wear in the late 20s-30s? | As you already noted, conditions were quite bad during this period and some clothes continued to rationed until 1936. However, there was very much a consumer culture under early Stalinism which emphasized, among other things, the social value of wearing fine clothing. This fit into a more general goal of encouraging *kulturnost*, the creation and spread of mass culture. This culture aimed, in part, to imitate the refinement of better off workers of other countries while retaining a uniquely Soviet character and mindset. People would dress as well or even better than their counterparts in the wealthiest countries, because socialism could create an abundant society where consumption and luxuries were readily available. Thus, the style of dress of the time for trendy urban youths (Stalinism, bringing about such a radical change in society, was for a time "trendy") was the latest factory-made goods - suits, nice collared shirts, shiny boots, dresses of all types, scarves, and even furs for the well-off (Or successful Shock Workers and Stakhanovites).
Peasant in-migrants (Mostly young men and their families) to cities, whose population numbered in the millions, had a difficult time adjusting their outfits to city life. Clothing shortages made it difficult for them to get new outfits, and their peasant outfits were mocked and judged by urbanites. When they assembled in public places women would often wear traditional head coverings and skirts, or brightly-colored dresses which were factory produced but resembled village outfits. But in general when they visited their villages again they wore the most stylish jackets and boots as status symbols.
In the countryside, style changes in the 1920s more heavily reflected generational differences between the old and young as much as class/cultural divides. Peasants traditionally would hand-spin their fabric into traditional skirts and dresses for women and coats and burlap shirt and underclothes for men. Everyone wore traditional sandals, *lapti*. The new "Bolshevik" fashion reflected the influence of mobilization into the Red Army for men - they dressed in great coats and breeches similar to their military days, along with cavalryman-style caps. Young men (And occasionally girls!) looking to revolt against traditional village culture would dress in haphazard military attire. Girls would try to wear factory-made dresses in the urban style, but the most common form of revolt was to wear makeup and change up their hairstyles to reflect urban fashion.
Collectivization radically changed how peasants could dress themselves. Local tailoring, speculation for fabric, and rural cottage industries were largely destroyed, making factory-produced styles the only option. The starvation caused by collectivization made food production a more urgent priority for families than home-crafting. By the mid-1930s many peasants, not just the youth, had moved to dressing in urban-style outfits, though even into the 1950s people still wore *lapti* for harvesting and rural dress remained common. Military-style dress became less popular as people wore nice jackets and shirts with starched collars. Consumer culture consciously transplanted Western fashions and styles, attempting to replicate and surpass them even in the countryside.
Sources:
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, *Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times*
Fitzpatrick, Sheila, *Stalin's Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization*
Gronow, Jukka, *Caviar with champagne: common luxury and the ideals of the good life in Stalin's Russia*
Hoffman, David Lloyd, *Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929-1941*
Hoffman, David Lloyd, *Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917-1941*
Kotkin, Stephen, *Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization*
| [
"During the Soviet period, a standardised \"universal\" school uniform was worn by all schools. Originally of a military style with peaked cap and high collared tunic, by the 1980s boys wore a functional dark blue pattern with shoulder patches identifying the school. For formal occasions such as the first day of te... |
Were the first German princes who converted to Protestantism actually doing it out of religious conviction or was it political shrewdness? | It really depends on the prince. There are most certainly people who converted out of pure-self interest. The big example of this is Philip of Hesse, who openly asked the early reformers if their new interpretation of the Gospel would allow him to have two wives. He made it clear that his support of the Reformation hinged on a satisfactory answer to this question. Once he got an answer that he interpreted as allowing bigamy, he went ahead and married a second wife, and supported Luther and his cohort. He later put aside his wife, but remained a big supporter of Lutherans.
Then, of course, there's the example of Frederick the Wise, one of Luther's staunchest and earliest defenders. He was a deeply religious man (he is supposed to have held the largest collection of Relics in Northern Europe) who appeared early on to be supporting Luther in having an open debate, and hid Luther in the Wartburg against the wishes of the Pope and Emperor, and therefore at great personal risk. It seems from his correspondence with Luther that in this process he became convinced of Luther's complete rectitude in the matter, and as a result became an avowed Lutheran. He died fairly early in the Reformation, though, so we have little evidence of how he would have acted as an openly Lutheran prince. We do know he got rid of all his relics, though.
Most Protestant princes fall somewhere between these two.
Please also remember that people can and do have complex motivations for their choices. What may seem to us, on the outside as a purely political motivation could have been supported by real religious conviction that simply cannot be measured in the sources. German nobles in this period tended not to write about their interior lives. Also, remember that someone can make a decision that seems personally advantageous, such as converting to protestantism and allying oneself with other Protestant princes, become successful in the aftermath of that, and then see that as a manifestation of God's favor. | [
"Although genuine ideological differences did drive german Princes to convert, the primary motivation of many was often the acquisition of easy riches and territory at the expense of their defenceless Catholic neighbours and subjects. Princes would convert on the grounds that they would be empowered to seize precio... |
[X-Post] from /r/AskCulinary: What leavening agents were used for quick breads before baking soda and baking powder were invented? | Yeast leavened bread were discovered millenias ago (after all beer was also invented around the same time) because there are naturally occurring yeast spores in the air, if you leave regular dough in a warm environment it will rise eventually even without added yeast.
According to [Food Timeline](_URL_0_) (they have a lot of resources on this subject matter):
> Archaelogical evidence confirms yeast (both as leavening agent and for brewing ale) was used in Egypt as early as 4000 B.C. Food historians generally cite this date for the discovery of leavened bread and genesis of the brewing industry. There is an alternate theory regarding the invention of brewing. Some historians believe it is possible that brewing began when the first cereal crops were domesticated. Sources generally agree the discovery of the powers of yeast was accidental.
| [
"The discovery or rediscovery of chemical leavening agents and their widespread military, commercial, and home use in the United States dates back to 1846 with the introduction of commercial baking soda in New York, by Church and Dwight of \"Arm & Hammer\" fame. This development was extended in 1856 by the introduc... |
why does the sun's rays penetrate your skin harder when it is overcast/cloudy? | They don't. When it is overcast you don't get as hot so you stay in the sun for longer. Maybe the sun rays are 20% weaker, but if you don't feel it as much you can stay exposed for twoce as long, for example. | [
"UVA rays are able to penetrate deeper into the skin as compared to UVB rays. Hence, in addition to the epidermal layer, the dermal layer will also be damaged. The dermis is the second major layer of the skin and it comprises collagen, elastin, and extrafibrillar matrix which provides structural support to the skin... |
What are some of the differences between a typical undergraduate course United States history textbook, versus a contemporary book you would buy from the history section of any modern bookstore? | I’ll answer this in the context of academic rigor in books in general. Roughly speaking, textbooks tend to be pretty general in their presentation of a topic that in reality often have deeper disagreements amongst specialists studying that particular topic, person, event, idea, etc. Having said that, disagreements about facts are less likely than reinterpretation, revisionism or reframing of facts unless there has been a recent discovery of newer primary sources to add to the discussion.
Determining where a book on a topic falls on the spectrum of academic rigor and thus its reliability can seem a little tricky. I have my own subjective criteria that nonetheless works for me. Generally, those printed by a reputable university press are pretty fair and objective and almost always reliable. Those printed for mass consumption may be a hit or miss in terms of rigor. If the authors face is on the cover, it’s probably crap. Journal articles are probably the most academic. | [
"Courses in American literature: Depending upon the university, these courses can either be broken down by time period, such as Nineteenth Century Gothic Fiction; authors, such as classes on Hawthorne, Hemingway, or Frost; or Literary schools and movements, such as Naturalism or Transcendentalism.\n",
"This guide... |
What was the last instance of two British nobles fighting over territory? | Somewhat before my specialization, so I can't give you a specific instance, but Henry VII (1485-1509) was the monarch who put an end to the practice of nobles maintaining their own military forces, known as 'maintenance.' He's the first Tudor monarch who ended the Wars of the Roses, a period of prolonged civil conflict between noble families fighting over the throne (and the inspiration for George R.R. Martin's books.)
Henry VII's consolidation of power was gradual but very effective. It was accomplished by levying large fines against the nobles who disobeyed, using the Court of the Star Chamber, and expanding the legal infrastructure. Henry VIII continued to strengthen the monarchy during his reign, to such an extent that the monarchy was able to maintain its primacy despite two weak and controversial monarchs (Edward VI, Mary I) coming after Henry VIII. | [
"In the resulting struggle, in which both brothers claimed to be king, Pedro allied himself with Edward, Prince of Wales, \"the Black Prince\". In 1367, the Black Prince defeated Henry II's allies at the Battle of Nájera, restoring Pedro's control of the kingdom. The Black Prince, seeing that the king would not rei... |
In the US we have mass shootings. Is this sort of violence a modern phenomenon? | Short answer: yes, it is a modern phenomenon.
Most historians, social scientists, and psychologists who study the mass killing argue there are two defining characteristics:
The number of people killed in a short time period. Most researchers follow the FBI's definition: "[a] number of murders (four or more) occurring in the same incident, with *no distinctive time period between the murders*" (Morton & Hilts 2006).
The perpetrator's motivation and isolation. Throughout history, there are many attacks by a single perpetrator that left many dead in a short amount of time. For example, during the Second Cherokee war a single Cherokee warrior killed and scalped several families of Floridian settlers in 1835. But we don't consider this a mass killing in the same way as Sandy Hook or the Orlando shooting. It took place in the broader context of war. The Cherokee warrior's motivations were clear and were shared by a large, recognized group. By contrast, most mass murderers are isolated and act without clear motivations.
Mass killings are better defined by what they're NOT: state-sanctioned violence (like public mass executions), religious or ethnic purging (like the Huguenot Massacre of 1565), guerrilla or terrorist warfare (like George Washington's tactics against the Iroquois or ISIS suicide bombings), serial killers (like [Carlo Gesualdo](_URL_0_)), gang or tribal violence, etc.
The first wave of mass shootings kicked off in the 1920s, notably with the Bath, Michigan school bombing. On May 18, 1927, Andrew Kehoe, a farmer, killed his wife and then blew up his house, farm, and the Bath elementary school, killing 6 adults and 38 children (Schildkraut and Elsass 2016). Familicide rates in the 1920s had already bizarrely skyrocketed (Schildkraut and Elsass 2016). The second wave of mass killings started in the 1960s, and has been almost exclusively mass shootings since then.
tl;dr : the kind of mass killing you're thinking of-- lone wolf takes out multiple people for no reason-- has only been around for about a century.
Sources:
Morton, Robert J. and Mark A. Hilts. "Serial Murder: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives for Investigators."
Schildkraut, Jaclyn and H. Jaymi Elsass. *Mass Shootings: Media, Myths, and Realities.* Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Press, 2016.
| [
"Mass shootings are incidents involving multiple victims of firearm-related violence. The precise inclusion criteria are disputed, and there is no broadly accepted definition. One definition is an act of public firearm violence—excluding gang killings, domestic violence, or terrorist acts sponsored by an organizati... |
What was the quality of life for a Nazi P.O.W. in Soviet captivity? What was their day like? | For a literary exploration of this topic, I'd highly recommend the novel *One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich* by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was kept in a gulag for several years after WWII. It is technically fiction, but I think most would say Solzhenitsyn was writing auto-biographically about his experiences.
Edit: To briefly describe the conditions, the camp is strictly run by both the guards and the unwritten rules of the prisoners, which balance self-preservation with a brotherhood among work groups. Solzhenitsyn spends a lot of time describing the hierarchy among prisoners and how every decision must be carefully made to maximize warmth and food. Teams are sent into the elements to perform hard labor for more than 12 hours every day. The novel does an excellent job of showing the sum-game of various decisions, bribes, and breaches of conduct and rules that could send a man to certain death in special confinement or through ostracization by his peers (or converserly, make him a king through extra rations or favorable work). These social insights are what make the book a classic, in my opinion. | [
"Upon return to the Soviet Union \"Ostarbeiter\" were often treated as traitors. Many were transported to remote locations in the Soviet Union and were denied basic rights and the chance to get further education. Nearly 80 percent of [Russian workers and prisoners of war returning from Germany] were sent to forced ... |
how is temperature measured and considered to exist in space? | Believe it or not, a lot of space is actually pretty darn hot! In fact, there are clouds of gas/plasma that surround large galaxy clusters that can reach up to 10 million degrees Kelvin. Wow! An environment like this provides a useful example to answer your question:
"Temperature" of a gas (most of space is gas/plasma) is really a measurement of the kinetic energy contained in that gas. In other words, it's a measure of the average speed of each of the individual gas particles. Think about a room full of children as an analog for a container full of gas. If the kids have a lot of energy and are running around really fast then that gas is "hot", if they are tired and just sitting there then that gas is "cold".
So what would you feel if you put your hand in some of the intergalactic gas that is 10 million degrees? Probably nothing. The reason is that, while each individual gas particle has a huge amount of energy, the density is so crazily low that not many of them hit your hand and transfer energy to it. In the children analogy, hot gas in space is like a huuuuuuge room with only a few kids running really fast.
So how do we actually _measure_ the temperature of gas in space? Unfortunately the answer is very complicated and depends hugely on what type of gas you're talking about and how hot it is. The short, mostly accurate answer is that things that are hot tend to cool (even in space) and the cooling process almost always results in some sort of emission that we can detect and measure. | [
"The earliest known estimate of the temperature of outer space was by the Swiss physicist Charles É. Guillaume in 1896. Using the estimated radiation of the background stars, he concluded that space must be heated to a temperature of 5–6 K. British physicist Arthur Eddington made a similar calculation to derive a t... |
I have heard Jupiter called a "failed star". If somehow Jupiter ignited and began nuclear fusion, how would that alter life on Earth as we know it? | For Jupiter to sustain hydrogen fusion in its core, it would need to have a much larger mass than it currently does. The least massive known star has about 1.3% of the mass of the Sun, 15 times as massive as Jupiter (see _URL_1_ ) - but it only has a luminosity that is 0.13% of our Sun's luminosity. For a star to shine, it needs to have at least some minimum mass because the temperature and pressure at the core need to be sufficiently high to get protons to fuse together and liberate energy that way.
Were Jupiter to be sufficiently massive to be a red dwarf star, the most profound effects it would have on the solar system would probably be that:
(1) It would have changed the orbits of the remaining planets significantly because of its stronger gravitational influence. How the orbits would be affected exactly is difficult to predict - the interactions between more than two bodies can become quite complex, especially if you let the orbits in the system evolve over billions of years. In short, the entire solar system would probably look completely different if Jupiter had formed as a red dwarf star rather than a planet. Now, if you consider a situation where we would just replace Jupiter with a red dwarf star and see what would happen before all the orbits get shuffled around in a catastrophic manner, the extra 0.1% of radiation (which, corrected for the fact that the closest distance from the red dwarf to Earth would be about 4 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, would seem as bright as a couple of tens of full moons here on Earth) would not heat up the Earth much.
(2) Red dwarf stars do tend to have magnetic fields that behave a lot wilder than the magnetic field of our Sun. This would have a significant effect on life on Earth, because of the intense flares of radiation and energetic particles that would often be generated by the dwarf would pepper the atmosphere, generating harmful conditions at the planet's surface. See ( _URL_0_ ) for some of the dangers we would face. | [
"Several theories have been proposed for how the planets around PSR B1257+12 formed. One theory suggested that the planets actually had existed before the host star exploded in a supernova about 1 billion years ago, however, this is inconsistent as the ejected material from a supernova would be enough to vaporize a... |
Why do beans make you fart? | Despite my flair, I once spent a summer working in a lab that analyzed beans for, among other things, the chemicals that resulted in flatulence.
The root cause of a lot of flatulence is fermentation of sugars in the intestine. Most sugars are broken up and absorbed by the body before the gas-causing bacteria of the gut can get to them. But some sugars aren't easy for the human body to break down and take up. Among these are oligonucleotides (EDIT: this should be oligosaccharides, just noticed the typo). Lone sugar molecules can join together to form chains: disaccharides and trisaccharides contain two or three sugars, and are easily absorbed. Starches are very long chains with many sugars. Oligosaccharides sit awkwardly in the middle, with a handful of sugar units. The human body doesn't take them up very effectively.
Beans contain lots of oligosaccharides. These pass through into the lower gut and hit bacteria, which ferment them (a way of breaking down sugars for energy in the absence of oxygen). The waste product of this fermentation includes a variety of gasses, which build up and exit the body as flatulence.
You can reduce the flatulence levels by soaking beans overnight and then discarding the water- this washes out some of the oligosaccharides. | [
"\"Beans, Beans, The Musical Fruit\" is a playground saying and children's song about the capacity for beans to contribute to flatulence. The song is also variously known as \"Beans, Beans, the Magical Fruit\", \"Beans, Beans, the Miracle Fruit\", \"Beans, Beans, the Mystical Fruit\", \"Beans, Beans, the Tropical F... |
what it is the president does. | In the grand scheme of things, the POTUS wears seven different hats. If you were president, you would be:
1. Chief of the executive branch. This is the role you take on as the head of the branch of government that enforces laws and regulations. For this, you appoint top officials to the different sectors and regulatory bodies (For example, you appoint the head of the department of education), and you also pick federal supreme court judges.
2. Commander in chief. You are the leader of the armed forces. You have the final say of troop movement, and in states of emergency can even move troops across borders without approval, but in most cases to do anything regarding crossing over enemy lines (Acts of war), congress has to approve it.
3. Head of state! This is like the queen in Britain. This is the hat you wear when addressing the people, being the top-most elected official in America. For example, when you call the people in charge of Curiosity to congratulate them or you do an AMA on reddit, you're being the head of state.
4. Director of foreign policy. This one's easy: It's all about diplomacy with regards to other nations. You decide if we send money to Greece, you decide whose side we're on in the Pakistan/Israel debacle, et cetera. You're an ambassador and a decision maker in one.
5. Leader of the political party. Obama is the leader of the democratic party right now. You will shape the positions your party stands on and will be the major fund-raising entity for it.
6. Guardian of the Economy. This one is the role you take when being the final decision force for economic stimulus programs, tax cuts, and other such things.
7. Finally, you are a legislative leader. You can veto bills that Congress pushes to your desk.
Now, what does he actually do on a day-to-day basis? Well, it depends on the time period. Clearly right now, he's giving speeches getting ready for election day. When re-election isn't in his near-field, he could be reading new bills that congress is voting on, he could be greeting visitors to the white house, he could be reading reports (Dozens of these come in a week) from the different departments, travelling to other countries, inspecting the armed forces strategy, or meeting with high members of the democratic party to discuss their weekly strategies. Being the president is a lot of reading and putting on airs. | [
"The President of the Congress is a nominated delegate from within the Congress (who must immediately resign from their delegacy position within the Congress) whose job it is to chair congressional meetings, set the agenda, and facilitate discussions within the Congress. The Congressional saw the election of Brian ... |
If DNA is the genetic "code", then what is the genetic "compiler"? | Dont try to force biological systems into strained one-to-one computer analogies. | [
"A compiler is a computer program or set of programs that transforms source code written in a computerized source language into another computer language often having a binary form known as an object code. The most common reason for wanting to transform source code is to create an executable program. The first comp... |
Were any tanks built in Florida during World War 2? | Would it be related to the McLoskey shipyards in Tampa?
That's the only thing (besides, I guess, MacDill AFB - during WWII, Southeast Air Base) that'd be near Dunedin as far as I know. McLoskey built [concrete ships there](_URL_1_)... so no steel, but they'd be using landing vehicles in the South Pacific. Oh, and there was another shipbuilding operation there, major economic stimulus... I think it was called the Tampa Shipyard.
There were training grounds for beach landings on the beaches near Tallahassee ([Carabelle](_URL_0_)) and Miami Beach... and I think Key West. But none of those are really near Dunedin, either.
In the 1940s... Dunedin would have been pretty rural and agricultural. There were some phosphate mining & refining operations in that part of the state... was phosphate something steel production or vehicle assembly could have used? Most of that goes to fertilizer nowadays... and associated deposits of limestone are used to make cement and concrete.
(Oh, on the steel in the northeast, the reason Birmingham, Alabama, was named "Birmingham" was because of the steel industry hoping to recreate the English city in the American South. But that's nowhere near Dunedin, FL. )
I'm curious, too!
| [
"In World War II the British further developed amphibious tanks. The Crusader was trialled with two pontoons that could be attached or removed, the tracks driving the tank in the water. The \"Medium Tank A/T 1\" was a tank with inbuilt buoyancy some long and tall. The Valentine, then the M4 Sherman medium tank were... |
why is that 3 out of every 4 years america is "the greatest country on earth", then on the fourth year "we need to make america great again"? | As Americans we only think America is great when related to other countries. We NEVER think America is great when speaking with each other. Bernie Sanders is the first candidate in a long time who openly believes we should be more like other countries. | [
"BULLET::::- \"U.S. Still on Top, Says Rest of World\" (Oct 2, 1971) - It's 1971 and for the 28th year running, the United States is named Number One Country as voted for by the Association of World Leaders.\n",
"None of it will be easy, and certainly much can go wrong. Still we have no reason to lose faith in th... |
How do semi-submersible ships work? | In general, pretty much like normal submersibles: they have ballast tanks that they use to control their buoyancy. Allow water into the tanks, the ship submerges. Pump (or blow with compressed air) water out of the tanks, the ship floats higher in the water. | [
"Semi-submersible vessels are able to transform from a deep to a shallow draft by deballasting (removing ballast water from the hull), thereby becoming surface vessels. Usually they are moved from location to location in this configuration. The heavy lift vessels use this capability to submerge the majority of thei... |
how does money from the money factory get into the us? | You mean the Mint?
The US Mint has several locations around the country that print and stamp bills and coins which are then shipped and exchanged with banks when the banks send the old worn out bills to be shredded. | [
"The process of money creation can be illustrated with the following example in the United States: Corporation A deposits $100,000 into Bank of America. Bank of America keeps $10,000 as reserves at the Federal Reserve. To make a profit, Bank of America loans the remaining $90,000 to the federal government. The gove... |
What is the scientific consensus regarding risk from Fukushima radiation in Pacific migratory fish? | I just read this article today. Not sure how scientific it is but it makes me want to think twice about consuming Pacific fish. _URL_0_ | [
"The damage to other living organism as a result to nuclear fallout depends on the species. Mammals particularly are extremely sensitive to nuclear radiation, followed by birds, plants, fish, reptiles, crustaceans, insects, moss, lichen, algae, bacteria, mollusks, and viruses.\n",
"The first study of the effects ... |
Why doesn't wind blow constantly because the Earth is spinning? | It does. There are global wind patterns caused by the Earth's rotation. | [
"In the absence of rotation, the wind tends to blow from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. The stronger the pressure difference (pressure gradient) between a high-pressure system and a low-pressure system, the stronger the wind. The coriolis force caused by Earth's rotation gives winds within high-pr... |
Why do some animals, like deer and rabbits, have seemingly perfect spherical poo? | Their poo is a lot drier, so, forms pellets instead of getting mashed together. These pellets are rounded by friction and pressure as they travel through the digestive system (analogous to how rocks with jagged edges end up as pebbles). | [
"Though African spiny mice originated in the deserts of Africa, they are frequently kept as exotic pets in other parts of the world, particularly Western nations such as the United States. In the pet trade, they are most commonly referred to as Egyptian spiny mice or, more simply, spiny mice. Though these animals a... |
when i tell a website to "save username and password" where is it stored? is it safe to do so? | A website doesn't remember that, the browser does. How they do it varies. It's not safe if other people use the computer really, no. | [
"A related possible criticism is that in the browser's password manager menu, saved passwords can be viewed in plain text. Thus, if a user has access to another's account, they could retrieve all their usernames and passwords in plain text with little effort. Further, this option cannot be turned off or removed wit... |
if debt is an agreement between borrower and lender, why can a loan be sold to a third party? | It's probably stated as such in the contract. It's important to note that the third party still must operate under the terms of the original contract. So they can't raise rates or add fees that didn't exist in the original. it's simply a way for the debtor to get SOME money when it's unlikely they'll get any, and can't establish the resources to collect on debts
| [
"In the event that the underlying debt is not properly paid, the creditor may decide to foreclose the interest in order to take the property. Generally, the law that allows the secured debt to be made also provides a procedure whereby the property will be sold at public auction, or through some other means of sale.... |
how can we tell where one gene ends and another begins? | _URL_0_
Basically, your DNA is subdivided into triplets of base pairs. A few of these pairs specially encode that a gene for a protein should *start*. Others say the protein should *stop*. The rest specify which amino acid should go into the protein. | [
"A termination signal is found at the end of the part of the chromosome being transcribed during transcription of mRNA. It is needed because only parts of the chromosome are transcribed. The beginning part is started at the promoter and then ended at the termination signal.\n",
"Conserved gene clusters, such as H... |
in college football what does redshirting a player mean? (i'm a football player this is so sad) | Basicallly, it means taking a college freshman and disqualifying him from play for that year, to develop his skills. A redshirted freshman is eligible to play for an additional year. College players can play for at most four years; redshirting just starts that clock a year later.
It can be useful both for balancing out the team, and when a player will benefit significantly from a year's training. | [
"Student athletes become redshirts for many reasons. One example is that the student athlete may not be ready to balance the demands of both academic and athletic requirements. Redshirting provides the opportunity, with tutoring, to take some classes and become accustomed to the academic rigors demanded of them. Th... |
Why does a change in extracellular potassium change neural membrane potential, but not a change in extracellular chloride? | Most neurons are relatively impermeable to chloride ions (Cl-) , so the presence of chloride has little effect on the neuron's membrane potential. Conversely, neurons are much more permeable to potassium ions (K+), so changing the potassium ion concentration would affect the membrane potential.
Basically, since the cell membrane has a high degree of permeable to K+, increasing the extracellular concentration of K+ would cause an equilibrium shift, resulting in the influx of K+ into the cell. As the K+ concentration in the cell increases, the neuron interior becomes more positively charged relative to its exterior. On the other hand, since Cl- cannot cross the cell membrane into the neuron, changing the concentration of external Cl- would have no effect on the neuron's interior charge, relative to the extracellular charge.
However, chloride ions are used by some neurons (inhibitory neurons), with the influx of chloride ions hyperpolarizes the cell, making it less likely to fire. In this case, the neuron's membrane is permeable to chloride ions due to the presence of chloride channels, so a change in chloride concentration would affect the membrane potential of that neuron. | [
"Neurons are surrounded by extracellular fluid rich in sodium ions and poor in potassium ions. The concentrations of these ions are reversed inside the cells. Due to the difference in concentration, there is a chemical gradient across the cell membrane, which leads to sodium influx and potassium efflux. When the ac... |
how does cobra insurance work? | COBRA is part of a law that required companies with 20 or more employees to continue to offer group health insurance to employees for a period of time after they leave employment. The goal was to make sure that employees who were laid off were able to continue to receive insurance while searching for a new job. You can continue to be insured through COBRA for 18 months (36 in a few special circumstances such as death of a covered spouse).
Whether it's for you depends... The advantage is that you will keep the same insurance you have, and if it's good insurance that's probably a good thing. The downside is, you will most likely have to pay more for it. You will have to pick up the full tab, which includes what you were paying plus what your employer paid, plus a bit extra for administrative costs. If you were paying $100 a month for family coverage, but your employer was picking up $500 a month of the plan, that means COBRA would cost you $600 a month (plus a bit more).
Before deciding you should figure out how much it would cost you (ask your employer) and what your alternatives are. Unfortunately the health care exchanges won't be open by July, but in the meantime you can search [E-Healthinsurance](_URL_0_) for a quick idea with no committment. If you can accept a high deductible then you may find a individual policy is significantly cheaper.
Other things to look into are your school's insurance, often universities have decent group plans available to students and their families. In addition if your wife is unemployed, you are not earning income and you have a child, you may qualify for subsidised state insurance programs such as medicare or medicaid. The [_URL_2_](_URL_1_) site has some additional information that may be helpful. | [
"COBRA does not apply, on the other hand, if employees lose their benefits coverage because the employer has terminated the plan altogether or if the employer has gone out of business. In cases where COBRA does not apply, some states have stepped in with state health insurance continuation laws, usually called \"mi... |
model-view-controller (mvc) software architecture. | There are different parts of a computer program ("software"). These days, excepting some embedded systems and other time-sensitive applications, it is best to separate these parts so they can be easily maintained.
Model-view-controller separates the components of software into three parts:
* **Model**: The part of the software that handles application logic, such as what data is saved, and how that data should react to certain commands, etc.
* **View**: The part of the software that handles what is displayed to the user. This part of the program takes info from the Model part (and sometimes the Controller part) to display the information.
* **Controller**: The part of the software that handles user input. This part of the program waits for user input, then informs the other two parts to make appropriate changes.
For example, let's say I have a spreadsheet program.
* The "Model" section would contain the current values of the data in the spreadsheet.
* The "View" section would take information from the Model section to display some of the spreadsheet on the screen (possibly not all of it, if the spreadsheet is too big).
* The "Controller" section would manage the user's mouse clicks and keyboard presses, and translate them into commands for the Model and View components. It would also need to know something about the View, in order to know, for instance, what cell the user clicked on.
Note that there aren't necessarily only one of each. For instance, if you have multiple files open, the spreadsheet program might have multiple models, or just one model that covers all of them, depending on the programming style.
**tl;dr**: Model-View-Controller is basically Logic-Output-Input
This technique was developed because, for simpler command-line programs, the three sections were often combined in the same place. When these programs had to be updated for graphical interfaces, or just needed to be changed, it was very difficult, as the underlying code assumed the output and input would not change. Imagine having to replace all sorts of printf() commands with the appropriate GUI elements - not fun. | [
"Model–View–Controller (usually known as MVC) is an architectural pattern commonly used for developing user interfaces that divides an application into three interconnected parts. This is done to separate internal representations of information from the ways information is presented to and accepted from the user. T... |
does the molecular oxygen that is dissolved in water get into your blood | Yep, it does.
But, the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water/plasma in your blood is very small relative to the amount carried by your red cells. Unless you're anemic (less red cells) or in a hyperbaric chamber (more oxygen can dissolve in the same amount of water) | [
"About 98.5% of the oxygen in a sample of arterial blood in a healthy human, breathing air at sea-level pressure, is chemically combined with hemoglobin molecules. About 1.5% is physically dissolved in the other blood liquids and not connected to hemoglobin. The hemoglobin molecule is the primary transporter of oxy... |
How was the Carnation Revolution received in the Portuguese countryside? | The news of the Revolution were communicated primariliy by radio. The night before the day of the revolution, small squads started occupying the most important radio and TV stations in Lisbon and Porto.
In the starting phase of the coup, these radio stations were used to broadcast previously arranged songs in order to sign to insurgent military units the beginning of the mobilization. After the beginning of the coup, the radio stations started broadcasting news about the revolution to the population and to advise people to stay safe at home in order to not interfere with millitary operations.
The revolution was viewed positively by most of the population.
The higher classes and the conservatives were afraid that the military coup led to the establishment of communism in Portugal. In the years following the revolution until the approval of the new constitution, some of the former members of the fascist party and other right wing groups strongly opposed the provisional revolutionary government.
In the colonies, the news of the revolution were received with joy. The revolution granted independence to all portuguese colonies, ending the 14 year long colonial war in Guinea, Angola and Mozambique.
P.S: Sorry for awful english.
**For more detailed information:**
[Carnation Revolution](_URL_1_)
[Revolutionary Process](_URL_0_)
| [
"A consequence of the Carnation Revolution was the sudden withdrawal of Portuguese administrative and military personnel from its overseas colonies. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese Africans returned to Portugal. These people—workers, small businesspeople, and farmers—often had deep roots in the former colonies ... |
How and where did medieval knights use the bathroom? Is it true that squires would routinely clean out human waste from a knight's mail/armor? | I am not able to track down old threads, being on mobile... But!
It has been stated here before:
-Soldiers with highly restrictive armor would rarely wear it during lengthy travel.
-Adrenaline experienced in battle suppresses bodily functions.
-Many soldiers did not have butt plates, instead opting for armored skirts which can be lifted or moved about.
-Most full-plate armor was very well crafted and allowed one to drop trou with at most, a few minutes labor.
Personally, I find the most difficult thing to do in armor is to sit in a chair. Breastplates and brigandine are awfully stiff, and gut protection is pretty important. You wouldn't want an unprotected spot there, even in the name of greater flexibility.
Any activity where you simply lean forward is a bit of a challenge. Squatting though, is not impossible. | [
"Bathhouses had a hot bath and a cold water bath to alternate between. Next to the baths were resting rooms. The bathhouses were described in medieval literature as a meeting place for lovers and as a place where eroticism could sprout. In reality, the public baths were strictly regulated and controlled to prevent ... |
how did we settle on twelve pitches to be the musical notes? what is the pattern behind 1,3,5 major chord/triad? | For thousands of years, people have discovered that certain pitches sound nice together - either at the same time, or when heard in a row.
There's a really good physical reason behind that.
Consider a musical A, which is traditionally exactly 440 Hz. The simplest possible note is a pure sine wave:
_URL_1_
Note that each complete waveform in the graph above is 1/440 of a second. Every 1/440 of a second, it repeats.
Your ear has stereocilia of different lengths. One particular length of cilia is just the right length that something that has a frequency of 440 Hz makes it vibrate perfectly, just like a swing has a natural frequency and trying to push it too fast or too slow doesn't work.
The waveform doesn't have to be a sine wave! You can get other waveform shapes that still repeat every 1/440 of a second, and you hear that as the same pitch (but a different timbre, like from a different instrument):
_URL_2_
Now to answer your question, look at the graph of 880 Hz. Note that while it repeats every 1/880 of a second, it's also true that it repeats every 1/440 of a second.
_URL_0_
So, that cilia that vibrates well with the 440 Hz tone will also be stimulated by the 880 Hz tone. It's like if you push someone on a swing twice as often as the natural frequency, it will still work great - half of your pushes will be useless but the end effect will be lots of swinging energy.
Today we call this an octave. A note with one frequency and another note with twice that frequency are one octave apart.
Other intervals that sound good are also simple frequency ratios. For example, what we now call the perfect fifth - like playing a C and then a G, universally sounds pleasing. Every culture in the world that has music uses that interval. Mathematically it's just 3/2 times a frequency: so 660 Hz compared to 440 Hz, for example.
We've discovered flutes 9,000 years old that play those notes.
When you put other notes together that all sound good together, you get chords (if you play them together) and scales (if you play them in sequence). The 1,3,5 major chord you mentioned is just one example.
In Western music, there are typically 7 notes in a scale. Most songs don't need any more than that. In fact, more than 90% of popular music songs from the past 60 years can be played with just 7 notes. (The keys are different, but it's the same 7 notes just in different keys.)
So why do we have 12 notes?
In the last few hundred years, it was discovered that by picking 12 notes **equally spaced mathematically** within each octave, nearly all of the notes from commonly used scales can be found among those 12 (not exactly, but mathematically close enough that our ears have a hard time hearing the difference).
That way, with a single instrument, you can play all of the notes in all commonly used scales, but more importantly you can play them starting on any note. This allows you to play songs in any key, and also to modulate - change keys in the middle of a song.
So 12 happens to work out really well. You could do 24, but many people wouldn't be able to hear the difference between some of the pitches. You could do 11 or 13 or some other number of equally spaced notes but then you wouldn't get many of the pitches that sound good in scales. You could pick pitches that aren't equally spaced in an octave but then you couldn't modulate - you couldn't play the same song starting on a different note.
| [
"During the 9th through 11th centuries a number of systems were developed to specify pitch more precisely, including diastematic neumes whose height on the page corresponded with their absolute pitch level (Longobardian and Beneventan manuscripts from Italy show this technique around AD 1000). Digraphic notation, u... |
how come cars don't automatically detect and tell what is wrong with them? given all the technology we have today? | But they do, just not to you.
You can read out an errorcode and look it up with an instrument for $100 off ebay, but why whould you?
If the code turns out to be, faulty generator, you still need to go to the shop.
And EVERYTHING will give off false messages all the time, the trick is learning how to interpreting them, and the shop is generally better than you (No offence :D).
Do you really want an LCD display that will be filled up with 100+ errorcodes every time you blew a fuse? | [
"The intelligent vehicle systems included tools to automatically adjust vehicle speed using headway sensor data, to alert the driver if a sensor detects an object with high probability of collision, to alert the driver when the car is not centered on its lane, and tools monitoring fuel usage. The study showed a dec... |
Was it known or suspected that the Treaty of Versailles would lead to the economic collapse of post WWI Germany? | I'm sorry but I'm taking issue with your premise that the Treaty of Versailles lead to the economic collapse of post-war Germany. I'm especially taking issue with /u/AusNeet's analysis that it was "110% correct" that the "severe financial burdens" were responsible for Germany being incapable of maintaining economic stability or growth between 1918 and 1923. The post war hyper-inflation was a bifurcated situation with a primary cause and a secondary one; the economic sanctions of the Treaty of Versailles were the secondary one. Peri-war economic decisions *by the German government* were the primary cause.
Let's start with the as I call primary cause. Germany had planned for a short war and had the economic policies of a short war, one of massive and rapid borrowing that could not be sustained. While France's credit expanded 242% from 17,289 million francs to 41,937 Germany's would rise 379% from 4,508 million marks to 17,126. Germany would, in fact, have more war loans drives than the Entente Powers combined. She would have a total of 9 while the UK would have 3 and France would have 2, for instance.
Germany's prime financial issue in 1918 and it's prime virtue in 1914 was its achievement of liquidity. Liquidity is the economic principle of being able to sell goods at their intended value. As in, not having so much overproduction and a lack of purchasing that you don't have to reduce prices to just get rid of "stuff". They predicted that mobilization would generate a shortage of cash but also leave industry with a shortage of workers and rendering the plant idle, not good. So they flushed their economy full of money to stimulate it. Price controls were good enough in 1914 but as war orders and employment rose Germany needed to throttle back, it was overproducing and overspending. It could have applied harsher taxation or increased interest rates which would have reduced production to a reasonable level and cut back on liquidity issues. They did neither.
Systematic failure of the German government to rethink financial policy for a prolonged war and for long-term employment rather than short term war employment lead to the *Darlehenskassen*. It would offer an interest rate of up to 6.5% on bonds (as opposed to the Reichbank's 5%) and only required deposits to be fixed for 3-6 months as opposed to years. For the sake of saving you the time of boring financial speak, it was a colossal failure of its intended purpose. In fact the total issue if *Darlehenskassenscheine* was 15,626 million marks -- ten times the original authorization of 1,500 million. Further instead of relieving liquidity issues of business, it actually pushed business away further. The local governments, who held about 1/4th of the bonds prior to this point rose up to holding an astonishingly 75% while business investments went down.^[1]
The people were completely impoverished. The final war bond drive would acquire 40% less "subscribers" (citizen donators) than needed. The German people just did not have the money to throw it away at war bonds when they could barely find a loaf of bread to feed their family. In response to this the German government would begin just flat out printing money to pay for the war hoping that in a victory they would seize so much economic potential from conquered territories that it wouldn't matter. Obviously they lost and the exact opposite happened -- they were the ones partitioned. This leads me to final point: **By the armistice Germany was spending 90% of its ordinary budget on interest payments acquired through war debt.** The German government had effectively sabotaged their own economy from pure incompetence.
Now we get to the issue of the Treaty of Versailles. More specifically we get to the issue of war reparations which are so commonly attributed to the rise of hyperinflation as some independent actor which removes all human agency. As we know already though it was self inflicted economic policies which contributed the most to the post-war economic conditions. What happened next was not incompetence but deliberate sabotage however. Rudolf Havenstein, president of the Reichbank from 1908 to 1923, would deliberately and intentionally conspire with other critical members of the German government to sabotage their own currency. The belief, as you can read more in depth in Sally Marks' *The Myths of Reparations*, was that by destroying their economy and basically sending inflation intentionally into overdrive they would force the Entente powers to reconsider and even remove reparations and sanctions. It was also an act of post-war aggression. They had lost the military war but wanted to win the economic one. By basically screwing the French out of their reparation payments needed to rebuild their country and industry the Germans would (theoretically) destroy the French economy in tandem by restricting their rebuilding process.
Considering the Germans weren't even pretending to act in good faith the French occupied the Ruhr in 1923. Combined with the death of Havenstein, who was the mastermind of this conspiracy, that same year the German government seriously began reconsidering its position. Hjalmar Schacht would be put in charge of the Central Bank and between 1924 and the Great Depression, 1929, the Weimar Republic would actually experience noticeable economic *growth and stabilization*. In this time the reparation payments would be forgiven in large amounts leading up to 1932 when nearly all reparation payments were forgiven by the former Entente powers, over 90% not having to be paid.
So when Germany actually tried to fix her economy and work in sane, economically safe ways it experienced growth even with reparations. It experienced a crash in the Great Depression like everyone else unfortunately and it got hit the hardest of anyone because they were still, ultimately, a rebuilding economy. However we know from those 5 years of economic growth that Germany was on the track to economic prosperity despite the treaty and, even in the end, the Entente powers were quite reasonable in forgiving war debts once Germany began acting in good faith.
------
^[1] Bogart, Ernest Ludlow, *War Costs and their Financing* pp. 116-117, Strachan, Hew, *The First World War: Volume I: To Arms* pp. 908-911
Marks, Sally, *Central European History*, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 231-255
Strachan, Hew, *The First World War: Volume I: To Arms*, Oxford University Press | [
"On 28 June 1919, Germany signed the Treaty of Versailles, a peace treaty which ended the formal state of war and imposed various punitive measures upon Germany, including military restriction, loss of territory and colonies, war debt, and effective acceptance of blame for the initiation of hostilities in World War... |
how do music venues decide on the price of a certain band? how do they figure out their popularity? | The band usually has a guarantee. So, the venue really doesn't do much other than rent the space out to the promoter. Promoter books the room, and pays the band's guarantee.
You can track a band's popularity by a multitude of factors. Radio play, fan base through social media, and previous tours.
So, if the Black Keys' guarantee is 50K (I'm just making shit up.) The promoter needs to sell enough tix to cover the band, the room, the local crew, the band's ryder, etc etc... and make a profit.
There's a whole lot more shit involved the bigger the band and the bigger the room.
| [
"Prices for Rock Band Networks songs are set by the parties involved with authoring and submitting the song, and can be set at either US$1.00, $1.99 or $2.99 The artist retains 30% of this cost, with the remaining 70% of each sale split between Harmonix and Microsoft (although the exact ratios of that distribution ... |
After Constantinople fell, when did the Greeks stop considering themselves Roman and start considering themselves Greek? | It was really not until the founding of Greece itself in 1821, and the eventual settlement in the 1830s, that those Greeks who now lived in "Greece", called themselves "Greek". People who spoke Greek, and still lived in the Ottoman Empire (where most Greeks continued to live until post-WW1), would have continued to call themselves Romaioi (Roman), or more specifically Christians (along with everyone else in the Balkans). You have to remember that the Ottomans called the Balkans: Rumeli, meaning Rome.
However for many Greeks, living within Greece, the idea of a "Greater Greece" (Megali Idea), in restoring the Roman Empire, was still a live dream and aspiration, up until 1923, when they were finally driven out of Turkey, by Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk" and the Turkish nationalists. After that, there were the only large scale population transfers, post-WW1, between "Greek" Turks/Muslims (including Albanians), and "Turkish" Greeks. After that level of homogenization, any aspiration of restoring the Roman Empire, died with the ethnic cleansing, and so did any pretense to the identity of being Roman.
Today in the area of Trabzon (Trebizond), there are communities of Pontic (Old) Greek speakers, who still consider themselves to be Romaioi.
If you want me to expand on any given topic, just ask.
Source: The Balkans: A Short History - Mark Mazower
If you want other sources I can also provide them, Mazower's book is just the most recent one I read that mentioned this issue. | [
"The term retained its standard usage in the Greek language throughout the Middle Ages; Byzantine Greeks used it widely until the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire, (later named the Byzantine Empire) in the 15th century (1453 with the fall of capital city Constantinople}.\n",
"After the Byzantine–Ottoman Wars, whi... |
Why is the historicity of Jesus being an individual person and not an idea widely accepted, even by atheist historians, when so little non biblical evidence of his existence can be found? | More can be written, but you might like to start with the FAQ section ["Did Jesus exist?"](_URL_0_) with answers by /u/jasoncaspian and /u/talondearg .
This is not to discourage discussion. More questions, data, and debate are welcome.
| [
"According to New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, most people who study the historical period of Jesus believe that he did exist and do not write in support of the Christ myth theory. Maurice Casey, theologian and scholar of New Testament and early Christianity, stated that the belief among professors that Jesus ... |
how do dogs learn to deal with emotions | Dogs can't comprehend what an accident is. If you fall on the dog by mistake for example, the dog will think you did it on purpose. It will either see the action as a threat or it will submit to you and try to relay that it's loyal to you so no need to attack it. Same thing if the dog bit you by mistake, it thinks it did it on purpose.
Dogs don't ask forgiveness, they're not that smart. The dog is trying to show it's not a threat and wants you to forget what happened. | [
"One limitation in the study of emotions in non-human animals, is that they cannot verbalise to express their feelings. However, dogs' emotions can be studied indirectly through cognitive tests, called cognitive bias test, which measure a cognitive bias and allow to make inference about the mood of the animal. Rese... |
Who were the first of the feudal lords in Europe, and how did they become lords? | In order to answer your question, I need to better understand and establish exactly what you mean by ‘lord’. Are we talking about lordship in a strictly feudal sense (land and levies), or more generally people in positions of power related to their bloodline and heritage? Or perhaps another form of lordship I haven't immediately considered? | [
"Eventually, great feudal lords sought also to seize governmental and legal authority (the collection of taxes, the right of high justice, etc.) in their lands, and some passed these rights to their own vassals.\n",
"Throughout the Middle Ages up until the beginning of the 19th century, noble feudal lords granted... |
- why gandalf chose bilbo. | He saw that there was more to Bilbo than even he himself knew. He was an exceptional hobbit capable of greatness when it was thrust upon him. Also, the party needed a burglar and hobbits are light on their feet and silent moving second only to elves. And we all know how well liked an elf would be in a party of more than a dozen dwarves, and how unwilling an elf would be to help dwarves recover their lost home and treasures.
Edit: READ THE BOOKS! READ THE HOBBIT AND READ LotR! They're fucking AMAZINGLY good. Quite simply my favorite book I've ever read is Lord of the Rings | [
"Humphrey Carpenter in his 1977 biography relates that Tolkien owned a postcard entitled \"Der Berggeist\" (\"the mountain spirit\"), and on the paper cover in which he kept it, he wrote \"the origin of Gandalf\". The postcard reproduces a painting of a bearded figure sitting on a rock under a pine tree in a mounta... |
what would the polarity of a spherical magnet look like? | It would have one "end" that is the magnetic north pole, and another that is the south. Just like the Earth. | [
"In electrodynamics, elliptical polarization is the polarization of electromagnetic radiation such that the tip of the electric field vector describes an ellipse in any fixed plane intersecting, and normal to, the direction of propagation. An elliptically polarized wave may be resolved into two linearly polarized w... |
[ww2]Why did the allies decide to launch the invasion in Normandy when they already had a foothold in southern Italy? | Good links from /u/OldWorldGlory there. I'll try to more specifically answer your question.
Planning for an invasion of Northern France actually started even before the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. An invasion here (France, not Sicily!) is a fairly direct route to Germany across terrain that is at least moderately simple to negotiate. It offered a chance to liberate a large population from Nazi occupation and remove the area's extensive natural resources from Nazi control and move it into the Allied arena. At the same time the Ruhr, the main industrial of Germany, is within striking distance on Germany's western border. Finally it was close to the main supporting bases and staging area in the United Kingdom.
British Prime Minister Churchill, and others, advocated strongly for an invasion of Italy on the basis that :-
- Italy was regarding as the weaker partner and likely to collapse if pressed. Churchill used the term 'soft under belly of Europe'.
- Forces to continue the offensive were already in the Mediterranean basin following the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa.
- Bombers flying from Bases in Italy could hit strategic targets out of range from the UK.
- Attacking France would likely produce a strong German counter-attack.
By the time Allied forces landed in Sicily it was clear that there would be no cross-channel invasion in 1943. The forces and logistics simply were not available, so planners moved onto spring 1944 as the target period. In the mean time however, as you point out, the limitations of Italy as a route into Germany quickly became apparent.
Although the Italian government had collapsed as hoped, the German army quickly filled the vacuum and in a serious of bloody defensive battles held off the Allied forces long enough that Rome was not liberated until June 4th 1944. Eleven months after the invasion of Sicily and only two days before D-Day. The issue was not only the mountainous terrain, but also that the narrow peninsula severely limited any opportunities for out flanking the Germans and the rivers tend to flow out from the central mountains to the coast. The advance thus became a succession of heavily opposed river crossings with all the advantages lying with the Germans on the high-ground.
With Allied forces stalled in front of Monte Cassino and on the beaches at Anzio it was abundantly clear by early 1944 that continuing to attack up the Italian peninsula was not the best use of Allied resources and virtually all opposition to the cross-channel invasion ceased.
Italy was used as the jumping off point for the invasion of Southern France in August 1944 and Allied troops (including my grandfather) advanced almost all the way up to the Alps. But it was a hard slog.
Primary sources Rick Atkinson's *The Guns At Last Light* and *The Day of Battle*. | [
"The Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943, codenamed Operation Husky, was highly successful, although many of the Axis forces managed to avoid capture and escape to the mainland. The Axis viewed this as a success. More importantly, in late July, \"a coup\" deposed Mussolini as head of the Italian government, whic... |
Why do people have a slight pause in breathing upon exhaling? | The slight pause is a chance for pressure to equalize throughout the lungs and increase the diffusion time for oxygen into the blood and for CO2 out of the blood. One of the problems with an increased respiratory rate is that their is less effective gas exchange as a result.
This is not strictly *always* the case however, as methodologies like [HFOV](_URL_0_) are very effective in certain diseases, but they don't operate solely at a high rate either.
Breathing is a function of pressure, flow and volume at the end of the day, they're all (obviously) related, but in normal breathing, it's just to equalize pressure within the lungs and chest cavity. | [
"Breathing is normally an unconscious, involuntary, automatic process. The pattern of motor stimuli during breathing can be divided into an inhalation stage and an exhalation stage. Inhalation shows a sudden, ramped increase in motor discharge to the respiratory muscles (and the pharyngeal constrictor muscles). Bef... |
Do objects exist in space without rotating? | There could be an object that isn't rotating relative to some other frame of reference, but probability dictates that they most likely will be. The law of the conservation of angular momentum tells us that the total "spinning" of a closed system is always the same. So if there's any spinning going on it will keep spinning. At some point something will most likely give it a little angular momentum, which will always stick around. So if there was ever a point in that objects life that it was caused to spin a bit, it will be spinning. | [
"Note that this rotation is kinematic, rather than physical, because usually when a rigid object moves freely in space its rotation is independent of its translation. The exception would be if the object's rotation is physically constrained to align itself with the object's translation, as is the case with the cart... |
how did we figure out what plants and animals were edible? did someone just take one for the team and try it and if they didn’t die we knew it was safe to eat? | You don't have to die to know if something is safe/unsafe. Although there is that risk.
There would be a certain amount of risk involved, but if you eat a very small amount of something and it doesn't make you sick, then you can try eating a slightly larger amount of it, etc. It's basically trial by error. A lot of things would make you ill if you ate them in decent quantities, but in small amounts would just make you feel not great. It's relatively few things that would kill you even in small amounts (e.g. hemlock and monkshood).
Then the information gets passed down via oral tradition.
The greater question is how did people discover that SOME parts are edible whilst others aren't?! That's just a testamant to the tenacity/stupidity/curiosity of humans. Rhubard stalks are edible, but the leaves will poison you. Asparagus stalks are delicious, but the berries are poisonous. Mayapple fruit is edible in small amounts but the rest of the plant is poisonous. | [
"If food supplies run out, a field guide to edible, medicinal, and poisonous plants may be useful. Or a hiker could study them ahead of time. As the movie \"Into the Wild\" brought out, some poisonous plants look like edible plants. He had a field guide with him but did not notice the details well enough.\n",
"Na... |
how some types of batteries can provide power and be recharged simultaneously | No battery can be recharged and provide power at the same time,
A battery is a chemical cell that uses a chemical reaction to provide electricity,
That reaction can only happen one way at a time, let it be oxidation or reduction, the idea is that you have a compound that reacts to turn in to a low energy state compound releasing energy in the form of electrons flowing from cathode to anode.
And when you put power in to that battery the reaction is reversed.
Now most modern electronics have a Bypass and charge control circuit,
The Bypass circuit will power the device directly from the charger when the battery is charging as to not damage the battery, so when your cellphone is charging but you´re using it, your phone is actually being powered from the charger, not the phones battery.
While the Charge control circuit will control the amount of current going in to the battery depending on current charge, Temperature and power coming in from the charger. with specific cut off points where its not safe to charge the battery or if the battery reaches its "full" position.
A lithium battery will normally report empty around 2.8V and full around 3.8v, this is to basically protect the user from the fact that lithium is pretty volatile, and reacts badly when overcharged and has a tendency to never charge again when under charged. | [
"Some components can be either a source or a load, depending on the voltage or current through them. For example, a rechargeable battery acts as a source when it is used to produce power, but as a load when it is being recharged.\n",
"Some devices can be either a source or a load, depending on the voltage and cur... |
how come women's shampoo typically comes separate from the conditioner vs. men's shampoo often is a 2in1 conditioner combo? sometimes 3 in 1 body wash, shampoo, condish. | 2 in 1 is pretty much bullshit. Shampoo is supposed to take shit off of your hair, while conditioner is supposed to leave shit on your hair. Trying to do both at the same time is much less effective. Men tend to have short hair, so not conditioning it properly isn't such a big deal since it will be cut off before damage starts to show on the ends. | [
"Conditioners are available in a wide range of forms including viscous liquids, gels and creams as well as thinner lotions and sprays. Hair conditioner is usually used after the hair has been washed with shampoo. It is applied and worked into the hair and may either be washed out a short time later or left in. For ... |
what is the feeling of being tickled, why is it more sensitive in different areas, and why does it happen to humans but not animals like dogs? | I'm not sure about the other animals not being able to be tickled but i recall reading about this a while back. From what I recall it is an evolutionary thing. Think of the places that tickle. Your feet, neck, ribs, all are very open and vulnerable parts of the body. These places tickle so that we learn objects in that area are not good things and can be potentially hazardous.
Once again no expert, but i saw this had no comments so thought I'd answer to the best of my knowledge. | [
"While the reasons for the inhibition of the tickling sensation during self-tickling remain unknown, research shows that the human brain is trained to know what sensation to expect when the body moves or performs an action. Another reason may be the lack of awareness of many sensations arising from self-movement, s... |
why do headphones sound better when you press on them? | you get a better seal around your ear, making more sound go directly in the ear rather than floating off | [
"Hardshell headphones are typically used by the sound board operator to listen to specific channels or to listen to the entire mix. While an amplified monitor speaker can also be used for this purpose, the high sound volumes in many club settings make hardshell headphones a better choice, because the hard plastic s... |
what is the process of initially translating a new language? for instance, if a new tribe is found in a remote part of the world - how is their language learned? | You point at a tree and say, "Tree."
Then see what they call it. Document, and repeat with more subjects. | [
"Spontaneous second language acquisition (and the genesis of pidgins) involves the gradual relexification of the native or source language with target-language vocabulary. After relexification is completed, native language structures alternate with structures acquired from the target language.\n",
"There has been... |
Yugoslav wars: Why was Serbia unable to simply steamroll Bosnia and Croatia? | NATO bombed Serb positions in BiH in 1995 essentially breaking the Serb strangle hold over BiH. As for Croatia, Serbia just lacked the power projection to strike deep into Croat territory, especially while simultaneously dealing with uprisings in BiH, Kosovo, a secessionist gov't in Macedonia and a deteriation of realations with the people of Vojvodina in Serbias north. Croatia declared independence and two weeks later Germany recoognized it, followed by the EEC a month later. Germany supplied Croatia any weapons they wanted from the E. German stockpiles. Its also important to note Yugoslavia had a policy of conscription and a huge army prior to the outbreak of hostilities, most of the male population was familiar with weapons and tactics. As a side note the Yugoslav army tended to station its troops in regions they were from so once all these countries started declaring independence they came with loyal ready made armies.
The Death of Yugoslavia, BBC, 1995.
Jane's International Defense Directory, 1998.
I think your confusing the Yugoslav wars (1992-1995) with the Kosovo war (1998-1999). | [
"As the war in Croatia reached a stalemate, the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina worsened. The JNA used its territory for offensives against Croatia, but avoided the Croat majority part of Herzegovina. Tuđman doubted that Bosnia and Herzegovina could survive the dissolution of Yugoslavia, but supported its integ... |
What does almost surely mean in the statement of the law of large numbers? | So the law of large numbers (LLN) has a few versions. The one you mentioned is the strong law of large numbers (SLLN). There’s also a weak version (WLLN). The strong law of large numbers automatically implies the weak law, but the weak law is much simpler to prove.
We have a concept of convergence in analysis. But the definition is for deterministic sequences, and it does not immediately apply to a sample average, which is random depending on the sample.
I’ll give a few probability definitions so it’s easier to follow the rest of the discussion.
**Definition: Probability space**
Say we have a random object. We aren’t sure what the random object is like exactly, but we know that the set of all possible objects it can be is in some set S. So for example, let’s assume we toss a coin an infinite number of times, getting heads or tails each time and writing down the sequence of results. For instance if we get heads then tails, then heads, we write down HTH…. We don’t know what sequence we’ll get when we begin tossing the coin, but it can only be in the set S={all infinite sequences with H, T as terms}. So this set contains the all heads sequence HHHH…, alternating heads and tails sequence HTHTH… and uncountably many more sequences. We call the set S the sample space for the infinite coin tossing experiment. In this way, the question of “what will my tosses look like as I throw my coin infinite number of times?” becomes “what infinite sequence will I randomly choose from S?”
We also see how likely sets of these sequences are. For example, we want to say how likely it is that the first 5 tosses will be heads. That is, we want to know how probable the set {sequences which start with HHHHH} are. It turns out that to define nice probabilities that make sense, we sometimes want to restrict what sets we can assign probability to. So we define a special collection of subsets of the sample space S (called a sigma algebra F). To have a collection of subsets be a sigma algebra, the empty set must be in the collection F (so we can say how likely it is that the random coin toss sequence is in the empty set), the complement of a set in the collection must also be in the set (so if we can say how likely the first 5 tosses are heads, we can also say how likely that at least one of the first 5 tosses is not a head), and a countable union (and by complementation, intersection) of sets in the collections must also be in the set (so if we can say how likely it is that the first n tosses are heads, for any n, then we can say how likely it is to get all heads (the singleton set {sequence HHHHH… infinitely} is a countable intersection of the sets {all sequences HHHHH…HH n times}). We call the sets in the sigma algebra F events.
We also define the probabilities on these events using a probability measure P. It assigns to each event a real number between 0 and 1 inclusive. The measure satisfies familiar properties, the probability of the empty set is 0, the probability of the entire sample space S is 1 and the probability of a countable union of disjoint sets A1, A2 is the sum of the probabilities P(A1) + P(A2) +…
Together the triple (S, F, P) is a probability space.
In the infinite coin toss probability space example, for any finite sequence of n terms, the sigma algebra contains the set of all infinite sequences that begin with that finite sequence (e.g. {all sequences that begin with HTHHTH...}) etc. The probability measure gives to each of these sets above the probability 1/2^n.
**Definition: Almost surely**
We say that an event A in F almost surely happens if P(A) = 1.
**Definition: Random Variable**
A real-valued random variable (r.v.) X is defined on a probability space. X is a function that assigns to each outcome in S, a real number or +-infinity. It also must satisfy the additional property that for any real number a, the set {w in S such that X(w) < = a} is an event in the sigma algebra F. This additional property guarantees us that we can probabilities like P(X < =a) = P({w in S: X(w) < = a}) make sense, as P is only defined on sets in F. For example, a sequence of random variables on S is given by X_n, where X_n(w) = 0 if the nth term in the sequence w is T, 1 if the nth term is H.
Now we can define arithmetic on random variables in the obvious way, pointwise. So the sum of random variables X and Y, X+Y is defined by (X+Y)(w) = X(w) + Y(w) for any w. Similarly for the other operations.
**Definition: Distribution of a random variable**
We define the (cumulative) distribution of a random variable X as the function F_X (domain real numbers, codomain [0,1]). For any real number a, F_X(a) = P(X < =a).
**Definition: Identically distributed random variable**
We say the collection {X_k} of random variables is identically distributed if for all k, X_k has the same distribution. Note that identically distributed random variables are not always equal, i.e. if we have for r.v.s Y and Z that F_Y = F_Z, then this does not imply Y = Z.
**Definition: Independent random variables**
We say a collection of random variables {X_k} are (mutually) independent if for any finite set {X_k1,…, X_kn} of random variables in {X_k} and for any finite set of real numbers {a_1,…, a_n}, P(X_k1 < = a_1, X_k2 < = a_2,…, X_kn < = a_n} = P (X_k1 < = a_1) P(X_k2 < =a_2) … P(X_kn < = a_n).
**Definition: Convergence**
We say a sequence of real numbers x_n converges to x if for every positive real number e, there exists a number N such that if n > N, then |x_n – x| < e. That is no matter how close you want to get to x, there is always a point such that all sequence terms beyond that point are closer than that to x.
**Explanation of SLLN:**
I can finally get down to what the strong law of large numbers (SLLN) formally says:
Given a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables X_n defined on the probability space (S, F, P), calculate for each n, the mean Y_n = (X_1 + … + X_n)/n.
Then P(Y_n converges to E(X_1)) = P({w such that Y_n(w) converges to E(X_1)}) = 1.
Let me break it down. We have a sequence of random variables X_n defined for all n. We also have that the collection {X_n} is independent (i.e. the joint probabilities are equal to the products) and identically distributed (all their distributions, and hence all their expectations E(X_1),…, E(X_n),… are equal. So we can say the same thing about the X_n converging to E(X_2), etc.
Now the mean Y_n is defined pointwise as above, Y_n(w) = (X_1(w)+…+ X_n(w))/ n for all n and w. Now the probability of Y_n converging to the constant E(X_1) is the same as the probability of the set of all w such that Y_n(w) converges to E(X_1). And the theorem says that the probability of that set is 1. The proof is long so I won’t write it here.
Let me continue the coin tossing example and connect it back to your question. We already defined w in S as one of the infinite sequences with terms H and T. We also defined X_n(w) as 0 if the nth term of w is T, 1 if the nth term is H. Now interpret each of your coin tosses as Bernoulli trials with a fair coin. Whether you get a head or tails on each toss is independent of the other tosses, and for each toss the probability of getting a heads = probability of getting tails = 0.5.
Now then we have Y_n being the average of the first n results, e.g. if you get the sequence w with the first terms being heads, heads, tails, heads, tails,… you have Y_1(w) = 1, Y_2(w) = 1, Y_3(w) = 2/3, Y_4(w) = ¾, Y_5(w) = 3/5,…
Each {X_1,…, X_n} is a sample, and Y_n is the sample average for the first n trials.
For all n, E(X_n) = 0 P(X=0) + 1 P(X=1) = 0 P(getting a tail on the nth toss) + 1 P(getting a head on the nth toss) = 1 . 0.5 = 0.5
In this case, since we have X_n being i.i.d., the SLLN says that P({w such that Y_n(w) converges to 0.5}) = 1. So we are saying that with probability one, we have a sequence of tosses w such that the sample average Y_n(w) will be closer than e to 0.5 after a certain point, for any positive real number e.
Why is the phrase “almost surely” important? Because while with probability one, the sample averages converges, there are still non-empty zero probability events where the sample average does not converge to ½. There are still outcomes in these zero probability events, so it is not certain that the sample average converges to the expected value.
For example, we earlier talked about the singleton event {HHHHH… infinitely}, i.e. the case where we get heads for every toss. Now we can prove that P({HHHH…}) = 0 (intuitively you have the probability of getting n heads in a row being ½^n, so take the limit and you get 0). Take the sequence w = HHHHHH…. Then for all n, X_n(w) = 1 and Y_n(w) = 1. But E(X_1) is still 0.5 since we still have the same formula from above (E(X_1) = Probability that the first toss is heads). So Y_n(w) does not converge to E(X_1), since Y_n(w) stays at least ½ apart from ½ for all n. So while we have zero probability that we get all heads, it can conceivably still happen, so we say the sample average Y_n converges almost surely to E(X_1).
**Explanation of WLLN:**
The WLLN says that if you take any positive number e, the probability that |Y_n – E(X_1)| > e tends to 0 as n tends to infinity. That is, that for any positive probability d, you can find an N such that the probability that Y_n is further than e from E(X_1) is less than d.
This is weaker than the strong law because (intuitively) you can still have, for some positive e, Y_n being further than e from E(X_1) with positive probability for infinitely many n, but the probability of this happening must get closer to 0 as n tends to infinity. The strong law does not allow this to happen, since SLLN says right away that the probability of Y_n not converging to E(X_1) is 0, and hence for any positive e, Y_n cannot be more than e from E(X_1) infinitely many times with positive probability.
| [
"BULLET::::- Apple CEO Tim Cook said something that would make statisticians cringe. \"We don't believe in such laws as laws of large numbers. This is sort of, uh, old dogma, I think, that was cooked up by somebody [..]\" said Tim Cook and while: \"However, the law of large numbers has nothing to do with large comp... |
Why is that older men often have large round tummies but women don't? | [Sex hormones and other hormones play a role in determining whether most fat is stored centrally (visceral adiposity, which is much worse for your health).](_URL_0_) Women's hormones cause them to store fat elsewhere, but after menopause when they lose a lot of their female hormones, they are more likely to store fat centrally like men. | [
"In humans, females generally have more round and voluptuous buttocks, caused by estrogen that encourages the body to store fat in the buttocks, hips, and thighs. Testosterone discourages fat storage in these areas. The buttocks in human females thus contain more adipose tissue than in males, especially after puber... |
Considering that a lot of early South Korean government officials were collaborators with the Japanese, how did this affect relations with them post World War II? Did they try and compensate by taking a hard line stance with Japan? Or was this a non issue? | First, let's address the term "collaborators." When that term is used in Korea, it includes people who worked directly for the Japanese colonial machine but it also includes people who submitted and benefited from the colonial occupation. It's not like Jewish collaborators - capos in the concentration camps and Jews policing themselves in the ghettos and sending others to die. In Korea, it's generally much more subtle since the Japanese were attempting to bring Korea into Japan, not to ethnically cleanse the peninsula. To be sure, some people worked for the Japanese police and military - Park Chung-hee was rumored to have used a false name to hunt down anti-Japanese Korean fighters (in contrast to Kim Il-sung who was an anti-Japanese fighter!) while he was in the Manchukuo army. I say rumored because I just heard about this a few years ago and [haven't read the book about it yet](_URL_0_). I've heard conflicting information - it's 100% true, it's a rumor, etc - so I'm not sure. But he definitely served in the Manchukuo army, along with other Koreans such as Paik Sun-yup (first full General in the ROK and the guy who saved Park Chung-hee from execution for being a communist!),Chung Il-kwon, and Kim Chang-ryong. Chung was a top general during the Korean War and Kim was a real son of a bitch. He worked for the Japanese ferreting out spies. He then used his counter-intelligence abilities to "clean up" corruption in the ROK military. In reality, he was Syngman Rhee's attack dog and in doing his job, he made a lot of enemies. He was gunned down by his fellow generals in 1956.
But the thing to remember about these people is the jobs that they did. Paik and Chung were simply soldiers doing their job. Paik came from an incredibly poor family and he struggled to become a teacher. On the advice of a friend, he joined the military and found he was good at it and was able to improve his lot in life. People like Park and Kim, however, would have been reviled by the people *had they known about it* at the time. That's the critical issue. Park was thrown in jail for being a communist and was only freed when Paik spoke up for him. During the Korean War, Paik convinced the US military to train Korean artillery units and he picked Park to be one of the first officers trained as an artillery man. By the end of the war, he had become a Brigadier General and was on his way to becoming a top man in the military with his anti-guerilla activities safely forgotten about.
So back to the question...
The first President of the Republic of Korea was Syngman Rhee. He ruled from 1948 until 1960, when he was ousted in a student uprising over election fraud and his heavy-handed rule. Rhee had been the first President of the Provincial Government in exile (until he was impeached) and he had spent a great deal of time before and after that in the US, pressing the case for Korean independence. He was definitely not a collaborator of any kind. All of his Vice-Presidents had pro-Korean credentials as well.
From 1945 until 1952, Japan was not a sovereign nation and as such, there was no negotiations to be had. [But preliminary talks began in October of 1951](_URL_2_) between Yang Yu-chan, the Korean ambassador to the US, and Shunichi Matsumoto, the Japanese ambassador to the UK. They met in Tokyo and arranged for the first official talks which began on February 15 and finished on April 25, 1952, three days before Japan regained sovereignty under the Treaty of San Fransisco. The second round of talks began on April 15 and went until the summer. [In 1953, Rhee went to Japan](_URL_1_) to talk to the government. Interesting to note, in this same newspaper on the same day, [an article mentions that the Japanese were planning to pay reparations to other countries](_URL_3_). Negotiations continued with the third round of talks in October of 53, the fourth round from April of 1958 until 1960, the fifth from October of 1960 until May 15, 1961. The coup that put Park Chung-hee in power happened the next day.
Now you're probably wondering, "why were they negotiating for so long? Why was there a five year gap between rounds 3 and 4?" Simply put, Rhee was anti-Japanese. During the US administration of Japan, the MacArthur line separated the Sea of Japan between Korea and Japan. Korea wanted this line to continue but was told that it was ending with the Treaty of San Fransisco. Rhee then declared the Syngman Rhee line. Any ships that crossed over the line were captured. This resulted in nearly 4000 Japanese fishermen arrested, over 300 ships seized, and over 40 people killed between the lines creation in 1952 and the Japan-Korea Fishery Agreement in 1965. Korea drew the line unilaterally and the Japanese protested but to no avail.
In 1961, after the May 16 coup, the new government pushed ahead with negotiations again in earnest. Kim Jong-pil, Park Chung-hee's right hand man and brother-in-law, gave a series of interviews to the Joongang Ilbo a few years ago. [This interview talks about his negotiations](_URL_4_). The two governments were stuck over the amount of compensation. In the end, Korea got 800 million dollars in compensation from Japan. They used the money to build the Pohang Steel Company (POSCO), the Guro industrial complex, the Gyeongbu highway, and the Soyang River Dam, all critical pieces in helping the South Korean economy expand.
The final agreement came in 1965 under Park Chung-hee, the former anti-guerilla fighter. The agreement caused a huge backlash as it had been negotiated in secret. Student groups protested but in the end, the *Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea* was signed, along with the *Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning Fisheries*, the *Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning the Legal Status and Treatment of the People of the Republic of Korea Residing in Japan*, and the *Agreement Between Japan and the Republic of Korea Concerning the Settlement of Problems in Regard to Property and Claims and Economic Cooperation*.
So to answer your question, there were no Japanese collaborators in power until Park Chung-hee in 1961. Syngman Rhee's political party had many collaborator supporters, but Rhee was anti-Japanese and he stuck it to Japan when he could. Once Park took over, the Japanese deal came to fruition pretty quickly. Was it because he was pro-Japanese or because Korea needed the money? Probably a little bit of both - the Park cabal knew that they had to get the economy moving and the Japanese money was the quickest way to do that. | [
"There were no formal diplomatic ties between South Korea and Japan directly after independence the end of World War II in 1945. South Korea and Japan eventually signed the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea in 1965 to establish diplomatic ties. There is heavy anti-Japanese sentiment ... |
Would we be able to save energy if Google made their homepage black instead of white? | LCDs work by applying a voltage to each pixel which "opens" them and allows light to pass through. No voltage and they are "closed" thus blocking the light.
Thus a black screen takes less electricity to run than a white screen but the voltages applied are very low. Most of the power will be drawn by the backlights which are always on when in operation.
You can see [here](_URL_0_) that power draw reduces on average by 3.16% for a black screen versus a white screen. Some monitors moreso, some less but in most cases not a whole lot.
| [
"Blackle is a website powered by Google Custom Search and created by Tony Heap of Heap Media, which aims to save energy by displaying a black background and using grayish-white font color for search results. Blackle claims having saved over 7 MWh of electrical energy as of February 2019, a claim under public disput... |
What part of the body heals the fastest? | The tongue is the fastest "external" part of the body to heal. | [
"It has been speculated by some researchers that application of ultrasound cause wounds to heal faster. Other than select articles on the subject of low-amplitude high-frequency sound in bone fracture healing, there is no medical evidence of this phenomenon.\n",
"This process is faster than healing by secondary i... |
Questioning Christian dogma in the Middle Ages | /u/koine_lingua answered your question [here](_URL_0_). | [
"Throughout the Middle Ages, there were a number of Christian sects, cults and movements that sought a return to the purity of the Apostolic church and whose teachings foreshadowed Protestant ideas. Some of the main groups were: Paulicians (6th to 9th centuries); Tondrakians (9th to 11th centuries); Bogomils (11th ... |
what exactly is my printer doing when it's performing maintenance on itself? | This largely depends on the kind of printer you have (ink jet, bubble jet, laser, etc). Lots of cheaper/personal printers rely on ink instead of toner. Because of the mechanism involved in ink printers (essentially tiny nozzles spraying the ink onto your paper) it can easily get clogged. In order to unclog these, the printer ramps up the amount of ink being output - essentially changing the dial from "sharp stream" to "full blast" in order to push the dried ink out of the nozzle heads. It's recommended that you don't do this too often, because it wastes a lot of ink.
In order to better understand what your printer is doing, I suggest you look up the differences between laser and ink printers. They each clog in their own way. | [
"A print server, or printer server, is a device that connects printers to client computers over a network. It accepts print jobs from the computers and sends the jobs to the appropriate printers, queuing the jobs locally to accommodate the fact that work may arrive more quickly than the printer can actually handle.... |
during the rwandan genocide, how did the hutus identify the tutsis? i don't want to sound racist but how do you tell them apart? | They had identification cards.
But at the same time there were minor physical traits that they used to "identify" each group, a tactic similar to the onw used with the Holocaust and Jews.
Most of these were indistinguishable. They even made a joke about it in "Hotel Rwanda" where an American photographer asks two women what they are the reply that one is Hutu and the other is Tutsi. He then says "You two looks like twins".
In Hotel Rwanda they even say that Hutus were supposed to he taller, thinner with light skin and longer faces. Meanwhile Don Cheadle displays those features and he is supposed to be a Tutsi, outlining the flaws with that system. | [
"The categories Hutu and Tutsi have an origin in pre-colonial Rwanda. However, with the arrival of the Germans in about 1900, and particularly after the arrival of the Belgians in 1920, the categories began to \"rigidify\" and become thought of as ethnic. The modern history of Rwanda has in many ways been one of te... |
what do politicians mean when they say the government should deregulate the economy and make the free market more free? | Deregulation is based in economical theory and ideology.
Free market proponents assume that market forces will organically develop the best solution to any problem. Government intervention via regulation will always stifle the free market and lead to sub-optimal solutions.
An example:
If the goal is to protect the climate and environment, the government might institute a regulation forcing companies to lower their CO² output by 25% or face extensive fines.
Free market proponents would argue that this regulation hampers business and does not solve the problem as efficiently as the free market would. They believe that absent any regulation business would be driven to reduce CO² output simply due to competition and find the best economical solution to do so.
This is the same principle for any regulation, the government sees a problem/challenge and institutes a regulation to achieve a given target (environmental protection, workers protection, increasing % of women in leadership positions, protect competitive markets, etc.) which according to free market proponents hurts businesses and doesn´t actually solve the problem.
In pure theory the assumption that a central government does not know best how to solve any problem and will cause undue consequences via direct intervention is sound. However it´s doubtful to assume that businesses will always act in the best interest of society and tackle such problems themselves. Imho without regulation most problems would not be tackled by business in the best time. | [
"Advocates of the free market contend that government intervention hampers economic growth by disrupting the natural allocation of resources according to supply and demand while critics of the free market contend that government intervention is sometimes necessary to protect a country's economy from better-develope... |
Can someone please explain the science behind why we ground/earth electrical currents? | Someone better may come along, but...
The main reason to ground circuits in most cases is for safety reasons. You are typically protected from electrical components in an appliance by electrical insulation. It's dangerous to play with live wires, right? Well those same wires run straight into the appliances that you touch with your hands. Insulation keeps that electrical current isolated to the places it should be.
But what if the insulation fails? Maybe the appliance was physically damaged. Maybe it wasn't made well or wore over time. Maybe a lightening strike caused higher than normal voltage. Then the appliance might become dangerous. Electricity moves along the path of least resistance. If you are touching the appliance, or perhaps even just too close to it, it is possible that YOU might be part of this path. Or maybe there's some other object nearby in the path which might catch fire under an electrical current. These situations aren't good.
To minimize such dangers, we "ground" things. We connect a wire to the part that SHOULD normally be safe- to the parts that are normally isolated from the current, and we send the wire into the ground. Wires are great conductors of course, and the ground is like a giant electrical reservoir. So now IF the insulation fails, the path of least resistance will be the wire/ground. Rather than shocking you, or setting something on fire, the electrical current is directed to the ground.
Make sense?
The same thing applies with static electricity, though you're generally more concerned about damaging things than you are about safety. If you work on sensitive electronics for example, static electricity can cause damage to those components. By grounding yourself and your tools, static electricity will flow to the ground (which doesn't have to be the ACTUAL ground...) rather than through those electronics.
As for your car question... This is different. The bricks are not acting as a ground. The thing is that, when barefoot, you have less static electricity in the first place. Slippers are very good at picking up static electricity. So when you touch the car, all of that electricity jumps to the body of the car. When you go barefoot, you don't pick up much charge. So when you touch the car you simply don't have much electricity to give off, if any. | [
"The Earth's magnetic field varies in intensity and orientation during the day inducing detectable electrical currents in the Earth's crust. The range of the frequency of those currents allows a multispectral analysis of the variation in the electromagnetic local field. As a result, it is possible a tomographic rec... |
Why are radio frequencies split into radio waves and microwaves? | Both radio waves and microwaves are examples of electromagnetic radiation. The split into various categories is somewhat arbitrary. In reality, there's a continuous spectrum of EM radiation and there are no real "hard breaks" between different parts of the spectrum. We group parts of the spectrum together with a specific name because of specific applications.
It's worth noting that radio waves and microwaves are quite close together in the EM spectrum. Depending on who you ask, they may even overlap. But it's all a matter of definition, there is no hard rule. | [
"A radio band is a small contiguous section of the radio spectrum frequencies, in which channels are usually used or set aside for the same purpose. To prevent interference and allow for efficient use of the radio spectrum, similar services are allocated in bands. For example, broadcasting, mobile radio, or navigat... |
how do we know that the big bang started from a single point, instead of some larger object? could it have started as the size of a baseball, the sun, or even an entire galaxy? | Let's clear up some things.
1. The "Big Bang" did not start out as a point *in* space. But rather *all of space* was crunched up infinitely dense. Imagine you took a bed sheet that represents space. Instead of the Big Bang being a point on that sheet and expanding outward, the entire sheet is crumpled up into an infinitely small point, and the sheet itself (and everything in/on it) expands outwards.
2. But even that doesn't really capture the truly bizarre nature of what happened. Because a bed sheet is finite, but space is not. So imagine a bed sheet that continues infinitely in all directions. If you crumple it up in one spot, you still have an infinity of bed sheet that is left uncrumpled. So you enlist the help of an infinite number of friends who all pick a spot on this infinite bed sheet (covering all of its infinite points) and begin crumpling it up until every single point on this infinite bed sheet is infinitely dense. And *then* it starts expanding outward in all of its infinite directions.
3. But! The "infinitely" dense nature of the Big Bang is a consequence of trying to resolve Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. And this is recognized as mathematically as a singularity. A point of infinite density (and more). While we use this as a reference point to talk about the early universe (So many nanoseconds after the Big Bang) the Big Bang itself actually represents a break down of our scientific models. We really can't talk about this point in time in a meaningful way. Not at least we resolve this incompatibility with Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
All that said, the Big Bang wasn't an object in space. It was *everything*. All matter. All space. Everywhere. Squished down to an infinitely small size. | [
"\"Big Bang\" chronicles the history and development of the Big Bang model of the universe, from the ancient Greek scientists who first measured the distance to the sun to the 20th century detection of the cosmic radiation still echoing the dawn of time.\n",
"Observations made by Edwin Hubble during the 1920s–195... |
If antibodies are transferred from mother to child, then shouldn't babies be immune to whatever diseases their moms were vaccinated against. | Yes, and they are. An example on a medical boards question of this would be a mother being given a tetanus vaccine and the infant being covered for when the umbilical cord is cut.
The thing is, infants aren't able to generate their own immune responses for 6-9 wks after birth, so they are completely reliant on the antibodies that transfer through the placenta. Once those antibodies are all gone, the baby needs to be immunized so that they can start making their own.
Edit: Weeks not months. | [
"Mothers who are immune to measles pass antibodies to their children while they are still in the womb, especially if the mother acquired immunity through infection rather than vaccination. Such antibodies will usually give newborn infants some immunity against measles, but these antibodies are gradually lost over t... |
Earthquakes & structures | Oh man, i've been waiting months for this question. Buckle up.
I'm going to do my best to address each of these questions in order:
**1. What makes some structures safe, and some others not?**
Well, this is a very complex question with a tremendous number of factors at play. Some buildings are better designed with stronger earthquake resisting systems or energy dissipation systems or more thoroughly engineered details. Some buildings just have basic dynamic characteristics (by virtue of their geometry) that fair better in earthquakes. Truth be told, any single building will perform drastically different for different earthquakes even if the magnitudes of the earthquakes of the same. There is just too much unknown to definitively quantify performance.
**2. Why do earthquakes that have fairly similar magnitudes have such wildly varying effects?**
Even earthquakes with similar magnitudes can be drastically different. Sometimes earthquakes can last several minutes while others only last a few seconds of violent shaking. Others can have vertical acceleration effects, soil liquefaction, or near-fault effects. If by shear luck the earthquake oscillates at a similar frequency to the natural frequency of the structure, heavy damage can be expected.
**3.Does this (building codes and materials) really account for all of it?**
Building codes have a profound impact on earthquake performance. In general, unless people are required by law to build structures that can resist earthquakes, they won't. Added earthquake resistance costs money that owners won't generally volunteer to spend.
That being said, earthquake codes tend to be regional, so even if the Soviet code is similar to the LA code, if the likelihood of a severe earthquake in the Soviet is very low, the code requirements will reflect lower standards. This is typical in any location where earthquakes are infrequent. Anytime a severe earthquake strikes in a place that doesn't expect it, damage will be severe.
**4. Regarding specific structures- what about size?**
Buildings of different size will perform differently under the same earthquake, but one is not necessarily superior to the other. A very tall flexible building will have a very low natural frequency, whereas a very short and stiff building will have a very high natural frequency. Since the frequency of the impending earthquake cannot be known in advance, there isn't really a superior choice.
**5. Would a large mansion be able to withstand more than a small two-room due to the force being spread out across a larger structure, or would the force be simply "in more places"?**
Earthquake force is going to be dependent on the mass of the structure, so even though a large mansion may have the mass more spread out, since it will likely have more total mass, the effect of the size of the building will probably be insignificant. That being said, other details like ceiling height and location of the mass within the structure can play a much larger role.
**6. What is it that makes wood so much better than concrete or steel?**
I'm not an expert on the performance of wood structures specifically, but in general, earthquake design focuses heavily on structural ductility. This basically means that when designing for earthquakes, it is very important that you design in such a way that the structure will deform significantly prior to failure. Materials that are very ductile lend themselves well to this criteria. In modern construction, steel is the most commonly used ductile material, since it is readily available and capable of deforming significantly before failure. Steel structures are known to move quite significantly during earthquakes without damage/failure. Concrete by itself is very brittle, but most structures use concrete that is reinforced with steel, with allows the design of ductile concrete members similar to those in steel structures.
One possibility for the performance of wood structures is that wood structures tend to be shorter (and therefore higher natural frequency), lighter, and tend to dissipate more energy then their steel counterparts. Despite this, i don't see any reason to think wood is superior to any of the other main building materials. The design itself plays a larger role.
**7. When a collapse actually occurs, does the quake's force actually break a structure all over, or is more due to gravity taking care of things once the foundation loses enough support?**
Anytime a structure fails during an earthquake, many failure modes are possible. It is not uncommon for structures to lean so much that gravity takes over and topples them, but in more recent building codes (at least in the US) this failure mode is prevented. In most of the design i've seen, buildings are designed so that the first members to fail are beams. This is done to prevent damage to columns and therefore prevent a full collapse. It is better to lose one floor due to a beam failure than it is to have the beam stay rigid and the column collapse, collapsing the rest of the structure.
Even though many structures are design to fail this way, it is really impossible to definitively predict the actual performance during an earthquake. There are just too many failure modes to say with any certainty which will govern.
For example, in 1994, the Northridge earthquake struck Los Angeles. Even though many of the steel structures there were designed to fail in a very specific manner that would allow for much of the earthquake energy to be dissipated, they found after the fact that many of the beams that had been welded to the columns (all steel) had snapped off right at the connection. The design code had stipulated particular connections that turned out to be unable to resist the earthquake forces and subsequently failed. Fortunately this did not lead to any fatalities, but is a glaring example of how sometimes the design code simply is not sufficient.
I hope that answered some of your questions. If you have any others, just leave a reply and i'll do my best to answer.
| [
"Earthquake engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that designs and analyzes structures, such as buildings and bridges, with earthquakes in mind. Its overall goal is to make such structures more resistant to earthquakes. An earthquake (or seismic) engineer aims to construct structures that will n... |
How much did Barry Goldwater's Jewish heritage contribute to his presidential campaign loss? | There wasn't really a need for LBJ to bring religion into it, when he could instead campaign on the basis of "Voting for Goldwater will end the world in nuclear fire."
The right wing groups that might have conceivably saw merit in campaigning against someone with Jewish heritage were, in any case, the people who got Goldwater the nomination. The John Birch Society could hardly campaign against *their own choice.*
Outside of a small fringe of extremists, it's hard to imagine a demographic, in 1964, that would have responded favorably to a political campaign attacking someone for having Jewish heritage. | [
"Despite vehement opposition from the leaders of his party's dominant moderate-liberal wing, such as New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and Michigan governor George Romney; Goldwater secured the Republican nomination. He sparked a grassroots movement among young conservatives by presenting himself as honest, comm... |
Why is Cornwall so (historically) underpopulated in relation to the rest of the UK? | One of the major industries in Cornwall was mining, in particular tin and copper. When the industry went into decline in the early part of the nineteenth century, it happened to coincide with an increased demand for coal as the industrial revolution was to a large extent powered by it. As a result many Cornish miners and their families moved either to coal mining regions of England and Wales, or abroad to work in mining towns in Australia, the US, South Africa and even Mexico. This is a significant cause of population decline as hundreds of thousands left Cornwall in the 19th century.
As for a port, Cornwall is (in coastal terms) between Bristol and Portsmouth which were two of the most important ports in English history. Plymouth also has an port, but crucially it didn't have the industrial capability or transport links needed to deal with imported goods from the empire, so never grew to be quite as important. | [
"Cornwall's population was 537,400 at the last census, with a population density of 144 people per square kilometre, ranking it 40th and 41st, respectively, among the 47 counties of England. Cornwall's population was 95.7% White British and has a relatively high rate of population growth. At 11.2% in the 1980s and ... |
what's it like to have dementia? | It varies dramatically from person to person and form to form. The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer's disease. This disease impairs memory, causing frequent forgetfulness and confusion.
Other forms cause changes in behavior, language, and judgement. | [
"Dementia is a broad category of brain diseases that cause a long-term and often gradual decrease in the ability to think and remember that is great enough to affect a person's daily functioning. Other common symptoms include emotional problems, difficulties with language, and a decrease in motivation. A person's c... |
why do people sell off stock in response to bad news? | People want to cash out before it gets any lower. While the market tends upward, who knows how long the downtrend will continue or how long it’ll take to get back up. | [
"The basic strategy of news playing is to buy a stock which has just announced good news, or short sell on bad news. Such events provide enormous volatility in a stock and therefore the greatest chance for quick profits (or losses). Determining whether news is \"good\" or \"bad\" must be determined by the price act... |
How common was marijuana use in the USSR? If you were caught smoking or selling pot in the Soviet Union, what would happen to you? | Note that hemp plant was used in slavic culture for many purposes since ancient times. Oil, ropes, food - but not as a recreational drug.
Marijuana use in USSR (as a recreational drug) was mostly localized to places with long traditions of such practice - Middle Asia, Caucasus, Altai. Certainly, russians who were living in these places were exposed to that practice and also used it, but it haven't caught up.
Situation has changed during the war in Afghanistan. Returning soldiers were smuggling in *chars - чарс*. Afghan kids would exchange it for anything - even something as mundane as a piece of 2x2, a nail etc. Then many veterans started to seek 'local supplies'. With weakened law enforcement of late 80s it led to huge increase in marijuana use.
> what would happen to you?
---
You would get a jail time. Depending on circumstances, it could be from several months to 3 years. Distribution was punished more than use. From slow, gradual tightening of criminal laws^[1] we could infer that USSR tried to limit marijuana use throughout its existence.
**Sources**
1. [Russian: Т.П. РОДИЧЕВА](_URL_1_) History of criminal penalties against illicit trade of narcotics. In many articles marijuana is specifically mentioned, with distinction between varieties. 1926, 1960, 1965 - years when drug-related articles of Criminal Codex were modified.
2. [Photo of soviet soldiers smoking *chars*](_URL_0_). From memoirs of a paratrooper, 56th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade, Loghar province, 1984-85
| [
"In 1926 and 1928, the Soviet Union produced some of its earliest regulations to prevent \"narcomania\", focused on cocaine and morphine, but it was in 1934 that they banned the unauthorized cultivation of cannabis and of opium poppy. A direct ban on the illegal sowing or cultivation of Indian hemp was introduced b... |
pcos and birth control | You may want to ask this in /r/PCOS. There will be a lot of women there who have been through the same issues you have. | [
"PCOS is a common disorder involving dysfunction of the endocrine system associated with female reproduction. PCOS involves discrepancies in the Hyphophyseal-pituitary-gonadal endocrine axis which can result in hormonal dysfunction, excess androgens (e.g. testosterone) and frequent \"anovulatory\" menstrual cycles.... |
My physics textbook says "the photon's mass must be zero. This makes sense too because a photon can never be at rest". Why does never being at rest mean a photon has no mass? | Light always travels at speed c, the speed of light, and so can never be at rest. If a photon had mass, then by F=ma, it could be accelerated, changing its speed until it was at rest, contradicting the fact that light always travels at speed c. To understand why light having no mass means it has to travel at c, it may help to imagine what would happen if light just had a really really tiny mass. Then by F=ma, even a really really tiny force would cause the light to accelerate very very quickly to the maximum possible speed in the universe, which is c, the speed of light. It turns out that in the limit that mass goes to zero, the math details of the same basic idea hold true, and any massless particle must always travel at speed c, but can accelerate instantaneously if a force is applied (for example in the case of reflection by a mirror). Note that you have the logic reversed in the body of your post; the photon has zero mass, and can have infinite acceleration. Note also that in most cases it isn't helpful to talk about the "acceleration" of a photon, for example reflecting off a mirror, because the incoming and outgoing photons are no more the "same photon" than any other, due to the fundamental indistinguishability of fundamental particles (and waves more generally). Finally, note that a common question is whether the photon accelerates from 0 to c instantaneously when it is created. In such cases the photon does not accelerate at all -- photons (like waves in media more generally) always travel at the same speed from the moment they are generated. | [
"Massless particles have zero rest mass. Their relativistic mass is simply their relativistic energy, divided by , or . The energy for photons is , where is Planck's constant and is the photon frequency. This frequency and thus the relativistic energy are frame-dependent.\n",
"A so-called \"massless\" particle (s... |
When Catholic rulers would go to war with the Papal States, how did they 'explain' to the populace why they were fighting against the Vicar of Christ? | Although there's certainly more to be said (especially given your multi-part question) you might be interested in this [very cursory answer of mine](_URL_0_) mostly focusing on the Italian dimension of confrontations between secular and religious authorities, also examining the Papacy's assertion of temporal power in central Italy.
In many ways, you'll see in that answer, the Papal States were probably the least efficient polity in Italy (and probably the most unstable) but importantly their existence was seeped in the Italian political tradition which in its earliest form equated religious with political authority. The slow but unmistakable transition away from this system, in Italy at least, was in many ways what framed many conflicts between secular rulers and the Papal States: the War of the League of Cambrai against the Republic of Venice, for example, was started on the pretext of the Republic of Venice running its own church as it pleased (although the deeper causes, as you might imagine, were much more complex). But for the citizens of Venice, their Republic held the moral high ground. Think of it this way: for the Venetians, arguing that St. Peter's seat in Rome is more important than St. Mark's in Venice is exactly what that power-hungry Pope *would* say. You can read more about that [here](_URL_1_).
Of course, I'd also be more than happy to answer follow-ups. | [
"The conflict between Church and state was in many ways a uniquely Western phenomenon originating in Late Antiquity (see Saint Augustine's masterpiece \"City of God\" (417)). Contrary to Augustinian theology, the Papal States in Italy, today downsized to the State of Vatican, were ruled directly by the Holy See. Mo... |
will rising seas cause atmospheric pressure increase? | No it wont, the frozen water from the melting ice caps is already diplacing a certain ammount of atmospheric volume. Imagine an ice cube in a sealed cup with no water in it. Both frozen and melted there is no difference in the ammount of air the water is taking up. | [
"The pressure effects of a tropical cyclone will cause the water level in the open ocean to rise in regions of low atmospheric pressure and fall in regions of high atmospheric pressure. The rising water level will counteract the low atmospheric pressure such that the total pressure at some plane beneath the water s... |
why does sleeping help cure a hangover, when if the same amount of time passes whilst awake you will feel little to no difference? | Sleeping off a hangover; sleeping itself doesn't really help. What is happening while you sleep is that your liver is scrubbing the toxins from your system.
The best way to address a hang over (other than drinking less, and thats no fun) is to take vitamin B6 and B1, drink lots of water and avoid Tylenol. | [
"There is a small amount of evidence that skipping a night's sleep may improve depressive symptoms, with the effects usually showing up within a day. This effect is usually temporary. Besides sleepiness, this method can cause a side effect of mania or hypomania.\n",
"BULLET::::- Some users report hangover-like sy... |
why do helicopter not have ejection seats like planes? | Some do...
For improved pilot survivability the Ka-50 is fitted with a NPP Zvezda (transl. Star) K-37-800 ejection seat, which is a rare feature for a helicopter.[17] Before the rocket in the ejection seat deploys, the rotor blades are blown away by explosive charges in the rotor disc and the canopy is jettisoned.[18]
_URL_0_ | [
"The Kamov Ka-50, which entered limited service with Russian forces in 1995, was the first production helicopter with an ejection seat. The system is similar to that of a conventional fixed-wing aircraft however the main rotors are equipped with explosive bolts to jettison the blades moments before the seat is fire... |
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