question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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when countries first started exploring other countries/trading with each other. how did the people understand each other? | For starters, most trade wasn't over long distances. Most trade was with neighbours which speak a similar enough dialect to make it feasible. Or had a significant group which speak both languages.
So A trades with B, B with C, C with D, etc... and finally it ends up at the other side of the world. Trade was mostly in ... | [
"Other Explorers such as the Spanish sponsored Italian Christopher Columbus intended to engage in trade by traveling on unfamiliar routes west from Europe. The subsequent European discovery of the Americas in 1492 resulted in the Colombian exchange and the world's first pan-oceanic globalization. Spanish Explorer F... |
Has there ever been a 13th-Amendment challenge to conscription/selective service in the United States? If so, how did it turn out? | > Were there attempts to make this argument say, during, the Vietnam War era, or otherwise?
Yes, during WW1, just after the Selective Draft Law was passed in 1917 (precursor to the 1967 Selective Service Law) several were charged and convicted of refusing to register and Emma Golding, the anarchist and prominent Soci... | [
"By September second during the Second Session of the First Congress, a strong group of states righters in Congress tried to remove conscription from presidential authority and to place it in the hands of the states. Representative Henry S. Foote of Tennessee, a former Unionist who had defeated Jefferson Davis for ... |
How was this video made? | The video shows a variant of the [harmonograph](_URL_2_) called a *Blackburn pendulum*. The general idea of a harmonograph is that of a pendulum that is allowed to oscillate *independently* in two orthogonal directions.
A [classic harmonograph](_URL_3_) is an apparatus in which a pen or marker is held fixed and a canv... | [
"The video was filmed at Telecine Cell in London, using a motion control system. The entire video and all the effects were shot on a single 400 ft roll of film, by multiple exposure and frame-accurate backwinding of the film strip. The graphics were shot as a series of secondary exposures using a television monitor... |
Would the Earth be colder by any significant degree without humans? | Just concerning heat flux from human bodies: 40W/(m^2 Human)*7E9 Humans * 2m^2 (body surface area) = 560,000,000,000 Watts
But the earth's surface is constantly absorbing around 89PW of power from the sun. That is 89,000,000,000,000,000 Watts from the sun.
Therefore, the heat flux from human bodies is negligible comp... | [
"If the climate tips into a hothouse Earth scenario, some scientists warn of food and water shortages, hundreds of millions of people being displaced by rising sea levels, unhealthy and unlivable conditions, and coastal storms having larger impacts. Runaway climate change of 4–5 °C can make swathes of the planet ar... |
how was /u/unidan caught? i completely understand why he was banned. but how he was actually caught remains a mystery to me. | I'm not sure what unidan was doing or what systems reddit has in place, but there are a lot of ways to upvote your own posts that are really obvious if a single user does them repeatedly.
If he didn't use a VPN or something to access the site, that's totally obvious.
If he *did* use a VPN, it's totally obvious if all... | [
"On January 25, Oleksiejczuk was notified by USADA due to a potential Anti-Doping Policy violation stemming from an in-competition sample collected in conjunction with this event. On June 12, it was announced that he was suspended for one year by USADA. He was already suspended one year in March by the NSAC and his... |
is data physically located somewhere in hard drives? how and from where is it recalled? | Data is stored on a magnetic platter, and its location is stored on the disk as well in something called a filesystem. The filesystem tells the location of every single file and where it is located. The operating system knows the location of the filesystem, and therefore where every file is. To load the operating syste... | [
"After data has been physically overwritten on a hard disk drive, it is generally assumed that the previous data are no longer possible to recover. In 1996, Peter Gutmann, a computer scientist, presented a paper that suggested overwritten data could be recovered through the use of magnetic force microscopy. In 2001... |
why is "18 years old" most desirable in porn films? (nsfw) | They know their market. Who doesn't like the idea of watching some 18 year old girl get pounded? The funny thing is a lot of them probably aren't even 18. Who the hell cares? Who would be able to tell? Just give her some pigtails and a cheerleader outfit and you're good. They'd say 16 if it were legal.
Also, this is a... | [
"Ruby Productions, which produces his movies, started making \"mature\" movies with people in their thirties but the popularity of \"elder porn\" has led them to produce a line with people in their seventies, and Tokuda is their star. Tokuda works with both young and older actresses including a number of videos wit... |
how do we control our bowel movements when we sleep? | > especially in those times when you wake up and you realize you are about to burst.
Well, those are the times when you couldn't control it, so your body woke you up to take care of business. Otherwise, when you're sleeping, most of your muscles (except for your heart and diaphragm) go into paralysis. This includes y... | [
"During sleep, these spindles are seen in the brain as a burst of activity immediately following muscle twitching. Researchers think the brain, particularly in the young, is learning about what nerves control what specific muscles when asleep.\n",
"Stopping straining during bowel movements, by use of correct post... |
how do poor people afford funerals? | You buy the cheapest options, get assistance from family/church/insurance and are billed for years. | [
"Funerals have become expensive in the way they are performed these days in the district due to show of real wealth and competition. The practice of funeral rites and other associated customary practices is another emerging issue affecting the welfare of the living standards of several families and individuals. The... |
how is a bullet "too close to the lungs to be removed"? | TV and movies have lied to us (shocking I know) in a lot of situations the bullet is left inside the person. There's little/no reason to remove it most of the time and doing so will cause undue damage. In order to remove a bullet you have to get tools inside the person to grip the bullet and then pull it back through t... | [
"BULLET::::- Bleeding and bruising where the needle went in. In rare cases, bleeding may occur in or around the lung. The doctor can use a chest tube to drain the blood. In some cases, surgery is needed.\n",
"BULLET::::- Closing volume (CV); the amount of air remaining in the lungs when the flow from the lower se... |
What exactly is happening to someone with a speech impediment? Are there certain speech impediments only noticeable in certain languages? | I'm a speech-language pathologist. There are many types of speech disorders. Some people may have difficulty coordinating their muscles to produce speech due to neurological damage, such as with [apraxia of speech](_URL_1_) or [dysarthria](_URL_0_).
Some children may also mislearn how to pronounce certain sounds (e.g.... | [
"Speech disorders or speech impediments are a type of communication disorder where 'normal' speech is disrupted. This can mean stuttering, lisps, etc. Someone who is unable to speak due to a speech disorder is considered mute.\n",
"In most cases the cause is unknown. However, there are various known causes of spe... |
Can two identical twins, with the same immune system, catch cancer from each other? | Yes. While this doesn't come up in humans too often as far as I know, [it is an important factor when researching cancer using animal models](_URL_0_). For example, if you wanted to implant a tumor into a mouse in order to study a cancer drug you would need to make sure that either the tumor cell line comes from the sa... | [
"A very rare type of parasitic twinning is one where a single viable twin is endangered when the other zygote becomes cancerous, or \"molar\". This means that the molar zygote's cellular division continues unchecked, resulting in a cancerous growth that overtakes the viable fetus. Typically, this results when one t... |
Are fifteen 1-minute sunburns as bad as one 15-minute sunburn? Clarification in text. | The answer may be found here:
_URL_0_
The conclusion:
"There is now substantial evidence that intermittent sun exposure is the major causal factor in basal cell skin cancer, with major studies showing little or no evidence for a relationship with chronic or total sun exposure (Kricker et al., 1995a,b). Squamous cel... | [
"Sunburn can occur in less than 15 minutes, and in seconds when exposed to non-shielded welding arcs or other sources of intense ultraviolet light. Nevertheless, the inflicted harm is often not immediately obvious.\n",
"The UV Index is designed as an open-ended linear scale, directly proportional to the intensity... |
the argument against and for, the use of drones in the us. | Pros: It's cool to be able to take out bad guys without risking the lives of soldiers.
Cons: We keep blowing up schools in Pakistan. | [
"One of the leading critics of drones in the US Congress is Senator Rand Paul. In 2013, he performed a thirteen-hour filibuster to try to achieve a public admission from U.S. President Obama that he could not kill an American citizen with a drone on American soil, who was not actively engaged in combat. Attorney Ge... |
$5 raspberry pi and why it is so incredible | It is a computer that runs a Linux distro for $5. It can run basic programs and teach people how to code. This is significant since its $5 price tag allows it to be accessible to so many more people who otherwise couldn't use a computer. Essentially, it makes computers available to more than just the middle class of th... | [
"In 2011, the Raspberry Pi Foundation developed a single-board computer named the Raspberry Pi. The Foundation's goal was to offer two versions, priced at US$25 and $35 (plus local taxes). The Foundation started accepting orders for the higher priced model on 29 February 2012. The Raspberry Pi is intended to stimul... |
Why doesn't USA celebrate Labor Day on May first? | While waiting for a new answer, [you may be interested in this response](_URL_0_) by /u/QuickSpore to a similar question, detailing the origins of May Day and why it gained international importance. | [
"Labor Day in the United States of America is a public holiday celebrated on the first Monday in September. It honors the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the development, growth, endurance, strength, security, prosperity, productivity, laws, sustainability, persistence, struc... |
Is there a limit to how far an electron can be from an atom? | There is a maximum amount of excitation energy that you can give an atom before all of its electrons are stripped from the nucleus. That’s the electronic binding energy. For a hydrogen atom in the ground state, that’s 13.6 eV.
However states of definite energy in an atom don’t have definite positions. The spatial wave... | [
"For example, for the electron, experimental evidence shows that the size of an electron is less than 10 m. This is consistent with the expected value of exactly zero. (This should not be confused with the classical electron radius, which, despite the name, is unrelated to the actual size of an electron.)\n",
"In... |
how do companies broadcast ads showing their product is "world's no. 1", though it's not, and still get away with it? | This relies on subjectivity. There's no truth in advertising rule about subjective assertions!
For example, if I say "I'm better than Suzie," this is subjective (meaning it's entirely opinion, and a matter of preference). If I say "I am better than Suzie at running quickly," then it is no longer subjective, as its tru... | [
"2014 saw Plumbworld venture into the world of television for the first time with the 'We Love to Say No' advert developed by The Market Creative. The project encompassed a 30-second TV advert as well as a direct marketing campaign to help with the re-branding and new website for the company.\n",
"The site is pri... |
why does my body crave exercise even though i hate it when i'm actually doing it? | I believe the body releases hormones that make your physical well being better after exercise and thus not having those endorphins for a while will cause withdrawal like symptoms. They improve your mood, circulation, sexual hormone intensity and also stimulate your metabolism and digestion so that your body is aware of... | [
"Physical activity is body movement that works your muscles and requires more energy than resting. According to a blog by the American Intercontinental University, college students should make time for exercise to maintain and increase motivation. AIU states that regular exercise has impeccable effects on the brain... |
Why are some grapes sweet and some sour/bitter on the same cluster? | Varying levels of ripeness. While grape vines' flowers all open up around the same time, there's a bit of staggering to ensure extended opportunities for pollination. This continues on through the fruit's development, also encouraging multiple opportunities for different dispersal agents (birds). | [
"This means that the grapes have been individually picked and are shrivelled with noble rot, often to the point of appearing like a raisin. They are therefore very sweet and have an intensely rich flavor, frequently with a lot of caramel and honey bouquet, stone fruit notes such as apricot, and distinctive aroma of... |
Weird metal rock found in the black sea. Can anyone tell me what metal it might be? | I would guess it's a drop of aluminum that melted and solidified in the water. This would cause it to become spongy and less dense than ordinary solid aluminum.
A few years ago, a passenger airplane was accidentally shot down with an anti-aircraft missile over the Black Sea ([see here](_URL_0_)) so that would be an e... | [
"Pollution with heavy metals was discovered by coincidence in 1966. Botanists found a species of liverwort which at the time was not known from other places in Denmark. Further examinations of the plant led to the discovery of a connection between this particular species and heavy metals or sulphur in the ground. E... |
If the sun up and stopped fusing today, for how long would it glow just from internal heat? | According to Kelvin-Helmholtz contraction, which was thought to give the sun its heat before fusion was discovered, the sun has a total lifetime of about 20 million years. | [
"However the Sun gradually becomes hotter during its time on the main sequence, because the helium atoms in the core are denser than the hydrogen atoms they were fused from. This increases the gravitational pressure on the core which is resisted by a gradual increase in the rate at which fusion occurs. This process... |
What would be done with decommissioned naval vessels during the Age of Sail? | A common life cycle for a warship was to begin its career as either a purpose built warship or converted merchantman. Once it was older and either obsolete or no longer fit for war it might become a storeship for supplies or a training vessel. Sometime after that it might be moved to a harbor and permanently moored for... | [
"All of the ships were decommissioned and transferred to the Military Sea Transportation Service in the post-war period. Several were later transferred to the United States Army and converted to floating electricity generating stations, and served in that role in Vietnam.\n",
"In June 1969, the Secretary of Defen... |
Who, what, when, where, why, and how did a standing army replace local militias in the US? | Im not quite sure what youre asking about here. The US Army has existed nearly continuously since 1775, so the standing army has existed longer than the United States.
The State Militias exist as well, albeit in a slightly modified form. See, in 1916 the US Government reorganized the State Militias into the various s... | [
"Prior to the Militia Act of 1903, which reorganized state militias into the National Guard of the United States, each state maintained its own militia, which could be used to supplement the full-time military in times of war.\n",
"The militia system was revived at the end of the colonial era, as the American Rev... |
why are feminists extremely active in the us, but little is said about the treatment of women in the middle east? | Why do you think little is said about the treatment of women in the Middle East? A quick [google search](_URL_0_) shows plenty being said about it. I hear about it often.
Feminists aren't happy about how women are treated in the Middle East but there isn't a lot they can do about it right now. It's a complicated situa... | [
"The women evaluated both the negative and positive aspects of globalization, providing greater opportunities to women and simultaneously harming them. For example, mproved communications technologies have allowed women to have greater communication with others in the movement and expand their message and yet, it i... |
Why does hair smell so bad when it's burned? | Hair is mostly the protein keratin. Proteins contain sulphur (specifically, two of the twenty standard amino acids, cysteine and methionine, contain sulphur). When burned, sulphur dioxide gas is released, which is responsible for the awful smell.
EDIT: [from Wikipedia](_URL_0_) | [
"When natural hair-type fibers are burned, they tend to singe and have a smell of burnt hair; this is because many, as human hair, are protein-derived. Cotton and viscose (rayon) yarns burn as a wick. Synthetic yarns generally tend to melt though some synthetics are inherently flame-retardant. Noting how an unident... |
why is it easier to eat (consume) calories than to burn them ? | Is it really? You burn over a thousand calories a day just by living. You don't even have to be conscious.
Most living organisms have a very strong innate drive to eat. After all, if you don't eat, you die. | [
"Diet itself helps to increase calorie burning by boosting metabolism, a process further enhanced while gaining more lean muscle. An aerobic exercise program can burn fat and increase the metabolic rate.\n",
"In his early books such as \"Dr Atkins' New Diet Revolution\", Atkins made the controversial argument tha... |
Why don't the British speak a Romance language? | This has been asked a few times already, [here's a link to some earlier discussions on the topic.](_URL_0_) | [
"The Romance language most widely spoken natively today is Spanish (Castilian), followed by Portuguese, French, Italian and Romanian, which together cover a vast territory in Europe and beyond, and work as official and national languages in dozens of countries.\n",
"The Romance languages, a major branch of the In... |
what is blu ray? why is it significant? | It's essentially the same tech as a cd or a dvd, but it uses a laser which is in the blue spectrum rather than the red spectrum, which means it has a wavelength that is considerably shorter than that of the previous formats and allows you to write the data closer together on the disk, which means you can get far great... | [
"Blu-ray or Blu-ray Disc (BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was designed to supersede the DVD format, and is capable of storing several hours of video in high-definition (HDTV 720p and 1080p) and ultra high-definition resolution (2160p). The main application of Blu-ray is as a medium for video m... |
How did Roman engineers explain gravity? | They probably explained it mostly through Aristotelian Physics, which was only fully repudiated in the 17th century. Aristotle claimed that there can be no effect (e.g. motion) without a cause. He explained gravity by appealing to the *nature* of objects. "Earth" and "water" were heavy elements, so they naturally moved... | [
"Roman civil engineering and military engineering constituted a large part of Rome's technological superiority and legacy, and contributed to the construction of hundreds of roads, bridges, aqueducts, baths, theaters and arenas. Many monuments, such as the Colosseum, Pont du Gard, and Pantheon, remain as testaments... |
I just saw a TIL post saying that the fax machine predates the telephone by several decades. Please tell me anything and everything about the history of 19th century fax machines. How did they work? | This isn't as strange as it at first sounds. Sending pictures and sending sounds as electrical signals were separate problems. "Fax machines" that predated the phone were inventions to send images over wires. When telephone networks became ubiquitous, the technology was adapted a bit such that it sent signals over... | [
"Early fax machine – The telautograph, the precursor to the modern day fax machine, was invented in 1888 by the American scientist, Elisha Gray who at one point in time contested Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone. The telautograph was a device which could send electrical impulses to the receiving p... |
Why, in movies, do nurses flick needles? | They are removing bubbles of air from the needle (which can stick to the walls due to capillary action). After flicking it they will also often squirt out a small amount of liquid to ensure that the air has been removed. | [
"Eyeline Matches and point-of-view (POV) shots within the film encourage audience identification with particular characters and their subjective experiences. This is achieved by cutting between the character and the object of their gaze. For example, when Melanie crosses the bay near the beginning of the film, the ... |
In British politics, what factors led to the decline of the Liberal Party and caused the Labour Party to be the main opposition to the Conservative Party? | It's been a point of contention for many historians. In George Dangerfield's thesis *The Strange Death of Liberal England* he points to the failings of the Liberal Party 1910-1914 to suggest that the party was in terminal decline before the war, with the Labour Party rising to take its place. This view has been critici... | [
"The Conservative government was also proving unpopular with the British public at the time, trailing the Labour Party in opinion polls and having suffered heavy losses in local elections for three successive years, as well as a poor performance in the previous year's European elections.\n",
"An all-party coaliti... |
Can em/radio waves be received with anything other than metal antennas? | Tell you what, all the other comments are fine, but I'll prove it to you. [This is 50Hz](_URL_0_). 50Hz is a bad frequency for communication, because it is too low. However, it is transmitted all around the globe anyway. Almost all electrical grids use 50Hz. What does this have to do with anything being used for antenn... | [
"Radio waves can be shielded against by a conductive metal sheet or screen, an enclosure of sheet or screen is called a Faraday cage. A metal screen shields against radio waves as well as a solid sheet as long as the holes in the screen are smaller than about 1/20 of wavelength of the waves.\n",
"The signal is su... |
what does an alford plea do, and how did it originate? | I could be totally off, but this is what I understand:
Let's say someone took all the cookies for snack time. For whatever reason, the teacher thinks it was you. You deny it.
She says that if she searches all your stuff and decides that you're guilty then she'll take away your recess for the rest of the year. Or, y... | [
"The \"Dictionary of Politics: Selected American and Foreign Political and Legal Terms\" defines the term \"Alford plea\" as: \"A plea under which a defendant may choose to plead guilty, not because of an admission to the crime, but because the prosecutor has sufficient evidence to place a charge and to obtain conv... |
how does a cutting of a plant grow new roots out of nothing but water? | Plants have cells called meristems in areas of new growth. The tips of limbs, the cambium layer just under the bark and the root areas have a lot of these cells. Meristems are similar to stem cells in humans - they are general purpose cells waiting to take on the form of whatever cell type is needed in a particular s... | [
"It also can be propagated by stem cuttings. If the cuttings are immersed in water for between 1–2 weeks. The roots will soon emerge and the new plant can be potted, and prepared for the garden later. Better results are gained if the water, contains lumps of charcoal.\n",
"It also can be propagated by stem cuttin... |
Why and when did the Romans choose Venus as their founding deity? | The idea that Venus is somehow the founding deity of Rome is, to a large extent, a result of the *Aeneid*'s success. Before Vergil wrote this poem, the story of Rome's origins were still up in the air.
Until then, Aeneas is viewed not as the ancestor of all Rome, but just of the gens Iulia (the Julian clan), to which ... | [
"Venus has been described both as perhaps \"the most original creation of the Roman pantheon\" and \"an ill-defined and assimilative\" native goddess, combined \"with a strange and exotic Aphrodite.\" Her cults may symbolize the genuine charm and seduction of the divine by mortals, in contrast to the formal, contra... |
why do smoke detectors have a radation warning? | They have a bit of Americinium in them. They use the radiation to detect carbon dioxide in the air. Its a bit of a simple process actually, the radiation normally steals electrons from whatever is around it, making ions. These ions are conductive and the smoke detector uses this to conduct electricity through the air t... | [
"Traditional smoke detectors are technically ionisation smoke detectors which create an electric current between two metal plates, which sound an alarm when disrupted by smoke entering the chamber. Ionisation smoke alarms can quickly detect the small amounts of smoke produced by fast-flaming fires, such as cooking ... |
how did a single nation (germany) manage to to occupy and hold most of europe for the better part of 4 years against multiple nations | Just to add a bit the /u/Dzugavili, remember that Germany had gotten beaten down in WWI pretty badly. So not only were they developing new technology to use in a war but they were less reliant on older tech.
The Allies went into the first part of WWII with old tech because they were not expecting to be in a war anyti... | [
"Germany's overseas empire was dismantled following defeat in World War I. With the concluding Treaty of Versailles, Article 22, German colonies were transformed into League of Nations mandates and divided between Belgium, the United Kingdom, and certain British Dominions, France and Japan with the determination no... |
why are so many skincare products full of activated charcoal? | Activated charcoal is just charcoal with a ton of surface area. It’s good at absorbing a lot of stuff, exfoliating, and it’s non toxic and naturally occurring.
It wasn’t used for many cosmetic applications because it’s black, which wasn’t an attractive color. Recently, black stuff is trendy, so it has become trendy. | [
"It is also used to absorb odors and toxins in gases, such as air. Charcoal filters are also used in some types of gas masks. The medical use of activated charcoal is mainly the absorption of poisons. Activated charcoal is available without a prescription, so it is used for a variety of health-related applications.... |
Do objects actually tumble in space, as they show in movies? | Objects in space can and do tumble for many reasons, but the most common (and most interesting) is a little-known but very cool fact about the way solid objects move. Voyager probably won't tumble. I'll explain why in a reply to this post.
Imagine a simple solid object -- a uniform-density slab, like a brick. No, l... | [
"Lorton's object was to capture what it looks like when a man is unexpectedly confronted with a motion picture of the most dangerous moment in his life, which took place during a major historical event, before the proliferation of consumer video cameras. Blyth and his family later commented that his \"Spitfire Cras... |
How does a Telescope work and actually "see" farther into the past? | In general you have the right idea. I will try to address the questions in the order that you asked them.
When people say the Hubble is viewing further into space, it tends to be looking at galaxies that are too faint to see with our eyes or another telescope. Another advantage that Hubble has is that it has very hi... | [
"In addition to its own observations, an important purpose of the telescope is to find an accurate source location. With its wide field of view, it can take an approximate location (±1°) from a gamma-ray detector and produce a location accurate to 1″ within a minute, for the benefit of follow-on observations by lar... |
In winter, do plants continue photosynthesis? | Afaik (and please correct me if I'm wrong) photosynthesis isn't something you can just "stop". Green parts which contain chlorophyll don't "choose" to photosynthesize or not, it's something very ..."mechanical": when chlorophyll is hit by a photon, it has no choice to react. Plants has even a protection mechanism which... | [
"Photosynthesis requires plants to take in carbon dioxide gas (). As they do so, they lose water through transpiration. Like other types of succulents, cacti reduce this water loss by the way in which they carry out photosynthesis. \"Normal\" leafy plants use the C mechanism: during daylight hours, is continually d... |
Regarding the Google Fiber announcement: What is the theoretical maximum bandwidth of fibre optic internet? | Paraphrasing the abstract of a talk that Peter Winzer from Bell Labs gave here last march, commercial wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems can acheive 10 Tbit/s, and research experiments have approached the 100 Tbit/s mark over a single fiber. Recent fundamental studies have shown that those experimental resu... | [
"Google Fiber provides an Internet connection speed of up to one gigabit per second (1,000 Mbit/s) for both download and upload, which is roughly 100 times faster access than what most Americans have. Google Fiber says its service allows for the download of a full movie in less than two minutes.\n",
"Google Fiber... |
What were the original forms of names like John, Paul, Mark, Rebecca and Mary. And Jesus. | Yes, the most practiced religion in the western world has had a large influence on the names people living there give their kids. You're mostly right, the original versions of those names were very different (though they're mostly Hebrew and Aramaic, not Arabic, which didn't exist until well into the first century AD a... | [
"One of the oldest Christograms is the Chi-Rho (☧). It consists of the superimposed Greek letters chi and rho , which are the first two letters of Greek \"Christ\". It was displayed on the \"labarum\" military standard used by Constantine I in AD 312. The IX monogram () is a similar form, using the initials of the ... |
The British legislative system was completely abolished at America's inception, so why did the Founding Fathers adopt the British legal system? | I think you're approaching this from the wrong direction.
In essence, the rebellious colonists believed that they were entitled to the the traditional rights of Englishmen, despite the fact that they were no longer in England. (Blackstone's *Commentaries on the Laws of England* is the traditional text that sums up ... | [
"After the 1776 American Revolution, one of the first legislative acts undertaken by each of the newly-independent states was to adopt a \"reception statute\" that gave legal effect to the existing body of English common law to the extent that the legislation or the constitution had not explicitly rejected English ... |
How did the Persians lose the Byzantine-Sasanian War of the early 7th Century? | **Part 1**
The thing about wars is that they aren't over until someone surrenders, and even then peace is not guaranteed. The Eastern Roman Empire was prepared to fight to the death in a war of attrition, the Persian nobility were not.
**Reason 1 - Christianity vs Zoroastrianism**
Christianity is a religion which c... | [
"By the sixth century, the Persians were mounting frequent attacks on the eastern border of the Byzantine empire. As a consequence, the Byzantines built a great number of military installations in the region during the early and mid-sixth century. Despite this the Persians seized the opportunity of a Byzantine civi... |
Why do people use an upward inflection at the end of a sentence to indicate a question in every language (that I've heard of)? Is there something innate to it, or is it simply cultural? | [A roughly similar question](_URL_0_) came up several months ago. As noted there, it's not exactly a universal. Russian uses a sharp fall on a *wh-* word--or *к-* word, if you prefer; the words кто, что, как 'who, what, how' etc.--at the beginning of a sentence. Prosody isn't my field, but I'm inclined to agree with /u... | [
"It is acceptable in Spanish to begin a sentence with an opening inverted exclamation mark (\"¡\") and end it with a question mark (\"?\"), or vice versa, for statements that are questions but also have a clear sense of exclamation or surprise such as: (\"Who do you think you are?!\"). Normally, four signs are used... |
Question about the speed of an object being pulled. | At the speed of sound in the material. | [
"As the speed of an object increases, so does the drag force acting on it, which also depends on the substance it is passing through (for example air or water). At some speed, the drag or force of resistance will equal the gravitational pull on the object (buoyancy is considered below). At this point the object cea... |
why are we not allowed to see the photographic evidence of osama bin laden after he was killed in his compound? | Because terrorists would use that image as a rallying point for more support and recruitment.
Bin Laden was an old, sick man and he died badly. The public release of the photos of his corpse don't add any value to his death to the US, but they would have an unlimited propaganda value for terrorists who want to make a ... | [
"On May 4, the Obama administration announced it would not release any images of Bin Laden's dead body. The administration had considered releasing the photos to dispel rumors of a hoax, at the risks of perhaps prompting another attack by al Qaeda and of releasing very graphic images to people who might find them d... |
what cause cleft lip or palate in human individuals? are these common around the world? in what area people have higher tendency to have cleft lip or palate? | It is a developmental problem and the cause is in most case unknwn.
But there are risk factor include smoking during pregnancy, diabetes, obesity, an older mother, and certain medications (such as some used to treat seizures), maternal diet and vitamin intake and some other stuff. There is also dome known genetic ri... | [
"Cleft lip and palate are the result of tissues of the face not joining properly during development. As such, they are a type of birth defect. The cause is unknown in most cases. Risk factors include smoking during pregnancy, diabetes, obesity, an older mother, and certain medications (such as some used to treat se... |
Do we digest food better when we eat the different nutrient sources separately? | I've never seen anything like that, and I can't think of any logical reason why it would be a valid claim. | [
"In his 2008 book \"In Defense of Food\", Michael Pollan suggests the explanation is not any single nutrient, but the combination of nutrients found in unprocessed food; not any one nutrient, nor the amount of carbohydrates or fats or proteins, but the whole length and breadth of nutrients found in \"natural\" food... |
black food stereotypes | Most American blacks come from the southern states. When slavery was abolished (and for several decades following... Up until the present) the former slaves and their families had to make due with what was available to them. Chicken and southern greens (and other soul food) was inexpensive and easy to come by for famil... | [
"In studying of the African American culture, food cannot be left out as one of the medians to understand their traditions, religion, interaction, and social and cultural structures of their community. Observing the ways they prepare their food and eat their food ever since the enslaved era, reveals about the natur... |
Why doesn't a gravity assist maneuver result in a net zero gain for the space ship? | Imagine a small object, _A_, in space with no apparent velocity. Now imagine another object, _B_, with significant gravity, zips by the _A_, too fast for the it to be sucked into a collision. As _B_ approaches, _A_ will move toward it, and as _B_ passes, _A_ will continue to move, with some velocity perpendicular to _B... | [
"Linear acceleration, even at a low level, can provide sufficient g-force to provide useful benefits. A spacecraft under constant acceleration in a straight line would give the appearance of a gravitational pull in the direction opposite of the acceleration. This \"pull\" that would cause a loose object to \"fall\"... |
What did the Soviet Union have against jeans? | As you wrote, in the 1950's jeans became a fashion item rather than a typical clothing of blue-collar workers and this is precisely the moment when the first signs of 'thaw' after the XX CPSU Congress in 1956 became apparent.
Jeans as a fashionable item were considered a sign of Western modern life that basically stoo... | [
"Although not outright banned, jeans were hard to come by in USSR. It was seen as a symbol of rebellion by the Soviet youth who wanted to emulate the style of film and rock stars of the West. The Soviet government resisted supplying the market with jeans as that would mean responding to the market, a capitalist pri... |
Why does Magnesium have a lower melting point than Calcium? | The internet seems to say that its due to a difference in metallic crystal structure with magnesium having a hexagonal close packed structure and calcium having a face-centred cubic structure.
I'll add to this that this melting point trend doesn't correlate with other trends for group 2. Notably, atomic radius increas... | [
"Calcium metal melts at 842 °C and boils at 1494 °C; these values are higher than those for magnesium and strontium, the neighbouring group 2 metals. It crystallises in the face-centered cubic arrangement like strontium; above 450 °C, it changes to an anisotropic hexagonal close-packed arrangement like magnesium. I... |
How was the Vietnam War perceived in South Korea? Did their returning vets struggle with PTSD and reintegration like their American counterparts? | The 1992 film [White Badge (하얀 전쟁)](_URL_1_) depicts the war and its effects, although it garnered some criticism from veterans. The novel was also translated into English.
The director also drew his influence from *Aimless Bullet*, a film about the difficulties of reintegration after the Korean War. It was one of t... | [
"The San Jose \"Mercury News\" writer Tatiana Sanchez reported that some American and South Vietnamese veterans were \"angry, [and] disappointed\" with the documentary. They characterized it as a \"betrayal\". She writes: \"veterans of the South Vietnamese military say they were largely left out of the narrative, t... |
If livers regenerate, would it be possible for me to donate half my liver, grow it back, then donate it again? If so, how many times can one repeat this process? | No, you can only donate your liver once, mostly limited by the fact that not just any part of the liver can be sliced off and be able to fully regrow. There are two (main) lobes in the liver and each has a full set of connections needed to connect to the rest of the body (an artery, vein and bile duct). They take one o... | [
"There are two events in which the liver has the capability to regenerate, one being a partial hepatectomy and the other being damage to the liver by toxins or infection . The processes described below deal with the pathways triggered after a partial hepatectomy.\n",
"In a typical adult recipient LDLT, 55 to 70% ... |
the consequences of no 9/11. | Sorry, hypotheticals are not valid ELI5 topics. Try /r/HistoryWhatIf | [
"Yes, I worry about potential government abuse of privacy from a program designed to prevent another 9/11—abuse that, so far, does not appear to have happened. But I worry even more about another 9/11. ... If there were another 9/11, I fear that 99 percent of Americans would tell their members of Congress: \"Do wha... |
why are credit card terminals not accessible to customers in restaurants? | Man you Americans and your retro credit card Tech. Wireless terminals, chip and pin and contactlees has been standard in Europe for a good few years now.
Feels wrong to let someone take your card away now. | [
"Oyster card ticket renewals and pay-as-you-go top-ups made online allow users to make purchases without the need to go to a ticket office or vending machine. However, there are certain limitations to this system:\n",
"Changing money at a bureau is often more expensive than withdrawing it from an automatic teller... |
Is a single ethnicity possible? | Race and ethnicity are not synonyms. Ethnicity combines culture, language, ancestry, and sometimes religion. On the other hand, race is based only on appearance. | [
"It is difficult to define the ethnic group a person belongs to, especially in Western societies where ethnic groups are porous and fluid. Individuals often shift from one ethnic identity to another as they transition between life stages. Ethnic group membership is constructed not just on the basis of descent but a... |
How did early astronomers know that those slightly brighter dots of light were planets? How did they know the order of the solar system? | What distinguished the planets from the stars for ancient astronomers was not their brightness, but the fact that some objects were always in the same relative positions to each other in the sky, while others moved around and could be found near different stars at different times. The ones whose positions were fixed w... | [
"Astronomers and natural philosophers before divided the lights in the sky into two groups. One group contained the \"fixed stars\", which appear to rise and set but keep the same relative arrangement over time. The other group contained the naked eye planets, which they called \"wandering stars\". (The Sun and Moo... |
why do some american athletes not stand for the national anthem, and what is the whole fuss and controversy around that issue about? | There is no fuss there is some political stupidity about how individuals protest which has been deliberately misinterpreted as being disrespectful by some racists who have never experienced racial discrimination in their life. | [
"BULLET::::- As mentioned above, during the 2016, 2017, and 2018 seasons, many NFL players from all 32 NFL teams have protested the national anthem due to police brutality, racial inequality, and other controversies around the nation surrounding politics and authority. Players have been caught on camera kneeling, s... |
what is happening culturally in china that can account for their poor reputation as tourists or immigrants elsewhere in the world? [this is a genuine question so i am not interested in racist or hateful replies.] | I heard an expat saying, something like, "The longer you live in China, the less you understand it.".
OP, currently the top 3 answers to your question are quite different from each other. I've lived in China for 3 years, and while all of the answers make sense, I can just say that China is so big and diverse that you ... | [
"Even within the Chinese community, tensions exist between different groups of immigrants. Local Chinese in particular blame mainland Chinese for disrupting previously-peaceful inter-ethnic relationships between the Chinese community and indigenous peoples. In particular, mainland Chinese migrants' activities have ... |
Do you think you could teach a history class backwards? | It would be interesting to try...but the thing about teaching history is so much of the later events are derived from decisions made in past events.
Say you start with Obama and go backwards strictly. What do you talk about without discussing the origin of the presidential powers or purpose in government without talk... | [
"The course is aimed at middle school and high school students. In the classroom, students take part in group discussions and use primary source material to learn about different historical events. The curriculum aims to create a history course with a reflective component, allowing students to think about modern da... |
what direct effects does testosterone have on the male mind and body? | This question has two parts to it, depending on how you phrase it. You can ask how testosterone affects the male mind and body during development, and you can also ask how testosterone affects the male mind and body behaviorally. I'm going to answer the 2nd one, but if you're curious I can also do the first.
Testoste... | [
"A meta-analysis revealed that evidence for a direct effect of testosterone on the expression of sexual traits and the suppression of immunocompetence was weak. It was found, however, that increased testosterone influenced parasite loads, indicating an indirect role of the hormone in immune function.\n",
"Testost... |
What was the point of stained glass windows depicting the gospels in Gothic cathedrals if no one could see them? | Early stained glass would have been the main source of light in a cathedral. Oil lamps and candles were used throughout, but these weren't effective sources of light. The stained glass would have been less of a ignorable feature, it would have glowed with sunlight almost like neon lights.
Narrative windows would have... | [
"The cathedral's windows have some panel tracery. None of the medieval stained glass survives and most of the cathedral's glass was created by Charles Eamer Kempe who created many windows over 50 years. His windows are reminiscent in colour of those of the late Middle Ages, darker on the north wall with Old Testame... |
This is short sword found by my family
member at least 50 years ago. Is it genuine? | That's a Late Bronze Age 'vollgriff' type sword. If it's genuine, you should definitely contact an archaeologist. I'm quite excited by this, so let me first post this before I edit it into something long:
I suspect it could be a reproduction cast. The metal looks a bit too dark (real bronze age swords used 10-15% tin,... | [
"One of the earliest basket-hilted swords was recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose, an English warship lost in 1545. Before the find, the earliest positive dating had been two swords from around the time of the English Civil War. At first the wire guard was a simple design but as time passed it became increasi... |
What did the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" sound like? | It's really very uncertain. A couple of Austrian scholars, Georg Danek and Stefan Hagel, have put a considerable amount of effort into trying to deduce some points about the musical side of Homeric performance, and you can [listen to the results here](_URL_2_) -- though I fear Danek's talents lie more in scholarship th... | [
"Homeric or Epic Greek, the literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, Iliad and the Odyssey, is based on early Ionic and Aeolic, with Arcadocypriot forms. In its original form, it likely had the semivowel and a voiceless version , as indicated by the meter in some cases. This sound is sometimes written... |
How does a "Photon Camera" work, if light needs to hit an image sensor to be recorded? | Your skepticism is well founded. This is an interesting project, but the moniker "Photon Camera" is a little misleading. They are absolutely not imaging a single photon, or anything close to it, as it moves through the bottle. They generate ultra-short pulses of light that then scatter from the bottle, some of which ma... | [
"Conversely, in a video camera or digital still camera, the signal is captured with a video camera tube or charge coupled device sensor, a device which sends the picture to be digitized and otherwise processed by the camera's electronics. The signal can be transmitted or recorded on a storage device for later playb... |
What were the duties and training that the guard of a medieval manor? | Medieval manors, or small castles, did not generally have "guards".
That is, there were no people who's full time job was soldiers or guards in these castles or manors except the Knight. The Knight (and maybe some members of his family like sons or brothers) would be the only people living in the castle who were prim... | [
"Castle-guard was an arrangement under the feudal system, by which the duty of finding knights to guard royal castles was imposed on certain manors, knight's fees or baronies. The greater barons provided for the guard of their castles by exacting a similar duty from their sub-enfeoffed knights. The obligation was c... |
why do such well-known companies as mcdonald's and coca-cola pay tens of millions to be the lead sponsors of the world cup/olympics/etc.? do people really not know these companies at this point? | A part of it is about securing future customers through positive association. If you are 5 y.o. and love football, and everytime you watch it on tv a big coca cola logo is burnt into your retinas, then you're more likely to prefer it once you're older and actually have some disposable income. Thats the idea, anyhow... | [
"Other major sponsorships include the AFL, NHRA, NASCAR, the PGA Tour, NCAA Championships, the Olympic Games, the NRL, the FIFA World Cups and the UEFA European Championships. The company partnered with Panini to produce the first virtual sticker album for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and they have collaborated for eve... |
what is gout, what triggers it, and what are the best ways for a person to avoid a flare up? | Gout is a buildup of tiny uric acid crystals in joints. It actually cuts into cartilage, skin, and capillaries. It can be incredibly painful.
Uric acid is created when your body processes purine, which is in most meats, fishes, and seafoods, but is especially high in organ meats and shellfish.
Reducing the consumpt... | [
"Gout is usually present with recurrent attacks of acute inflammatory arthritis (red, tender, hot, swollen joint). It is caused by elevated levels of uric acid in the blood that crystallizes and deposits in joints, tendons, and surrounding tissues. Gout affects 1% of individuals in Western populations at some point... |
Were there any "elite" Roman Auxiliaries? | Well, it depends on what you consider "elite", of course.
Balearic, Rhodian and Macedonian slingers were condiered excellent troops to counter eastern horse archers, as were Cretan and Syrian archers. Germanic and Saramatian heavy cavalry were often used to suplement Roman cavalry. Illyrian medium infantry (combined ... | [
"Auxiliaries in the Roman army were recruited from provincial tribal groups who did not have Roman citizenship. As the Roman army of the Republican and early Empire periods was essentially based on the heavy infantry who made up the legions, it favored the recruitment of auxiliaries that excelled in supplementary r... |
what does the confederate flag have to do with the charleston shooting? | There is no direct connection between the flag and the shooting. There is no direct connection between the Rhodesia flag and the shooting either.
The reason that the issue is being raised is because there are many who believe that the South's acceptance and veneration of Confederate symbols---like the flag---is part ... | [
"Moore has spoken out against the display of the Confederate flag; in 2015, two days after the Charleston church shooting (in which nine black churchgoers were murdered in an apparent hate crime), Moore wrote: \"The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire. White Christia... |
Why aren't herbivores capable of digesting meat? | If you look at the digestive system of a ruminant, like a cow for instance, it's set up much more differently than an omnivore's or a carnivore's. Since most animals cannot produce cellulose-degrading enzymes, much of the digestion in the digestive system of a cow is actually done by microbes, and the cow extracts nutr... | [
"A large percentage of herbivores have mutualistic gut flora that help them digest plant matter, which is more difficult to digest than animal prey. This flora is made up of cellulose-digesting protozoans or bacteria.\n",
"Like other herbivores, lagomorphs have to deal with a bulky diet in which the cell walls ar... |
Is it possible to construct a radially magnetized sphere? | The second of [Maxwell's equations](_URL_0_) which is known as [Gauss's law for magnetism](_URL_2_) states that the divergence of a magnetic field is zero.
This means that if you imagine a sphere that encloses your "simulated monopole" and you sum up the magnetic field lines exiting over the entire surface, the value ... | [
"Higher fields are possible by optimising the spherical design to take account of the fact that it is composed of point dipoles (and not line dipoles). This results in the stretching of the sphere to an elliptical shape and having a non-uniform distribution of magnetization over the component parts of the sphere. U... |
Are smaller dogs less intelligent than bigger dogs because they have smaller brains? | The general measurement used in science is a brain mass to body mass ratio. This is because generally larger animals need more brain power to control the additional volume.
So to answer your question, no a smaller dog is not less intelligent than a bigger dog. The bigger dog's brain just has more that it needs to con... | [
"Dogs have demonstrated episodic-like memory by recalling past events that included the complex actions of humans. In a 2019 study, a correlation has been shown between the size of the dog and the functions of memory and self-control, with larger dogs performing significantly better than smaller dogs in these funct... |
Did Gaius Marius ever give a reason for his army reform? | > Specifically why he started to allow landless men to join
That *is* the so-called "Marian Reform," there's not really anything to be specific about. That's it, that's the entirety of Marius' legislation regarding the army, and even then it was surely not as revolutionary a decision as is often made out--the propert... | [
"As a result of his reforms, Marius was able to display the full capability of the new Roman army of the Late Republic. In doing so, he significantly increased the effectiveness and diversity of the army's individuals as well as the mobility of the army as a whole, both on and off the battlefield.\n",
"The next m... |
why does every group of files have to be downloaded as zip/rar instead of a simple folder? | They don't really have to be from a technical standpoint, but things like web browsers happened to standardize on supporting single file downloads. A zip/rar/tarball is just a simple way of bundling a whole bunch of logical files into one big one so that it fits into the one file per download model.
There are a lot o... | [
"A directory is placed at the end of a ZIP file. This identifies what files are in the ZIP and identifies where in the ZIP that file is located. This allows ZIP readers to load the list of files without reading the entire ZIP archive. ZIP archives can also include extra data that is not related to the ZIP archive. ... |
where does the money lost from stock increases go? | where does the money from stock increases come from? | Things have value based on what people think they are worth.
If it's April of 2019, a roll of toilet paper might cost $0.83.
If it's April of 2020, a roll of toilet paper might cost $7.00.
This is based on how badly people want it.
Did the money get 'created' out of nowhere? No; it's just that people are now more ... | [
"An increase in the nominal money stock leads to a higher real money stock at each level of prices. In the asset market, the decrease in interest rates induces the public to hold higher real balances. It stimulates the aggregate demand and thereby increases the equilibrium level of income and spending.Thus, as we c... |
Need info on women accompanying scientific expeditions to wild places in 16th-18th century | I don't know whether polar regions count as a wild, though I know about one example and would like to tell about.
Tatyana Pronchishcheva(1710-1736) is known as a first Russian female Polar explorer. She accomponied her husband, [Vassily Pronchishchev](_URL_2_) in his expedition to the Artctic ocean.
At that time the... | [
"The first women involved in exploration of Antarctica were wives and companions of male travelers and explorers. Women accompanied men as \"whaling wives\" to Antarctic waters. The first women to see the continent of Antarctica was Norwegian Ingrid Christensen and her companion, Mathilde Wegger, both of whom were ... |
Is it possible to make a fan using sound waves? | The opposite's possible.
_URL_0_ | [
"The wind machine (also called aeoliphone) is a friction idiophone, which is a class of instrument which produces sound through vibrations within the instrument itself. It is a specialist musical instrument used to produce the sound of wind in orchestral compositions and musical theater productions.\n",
"Mechanic... |
why is heroin and oxycontin abuse so prevalent in massachusetts? | Because it makes you feel good.
I'd venture to say that most of the US has these same problems, maybe not with the heroin, because that can be difficult to find depending on location, but prescription pain killers are widely abused everywhere. Especially places that have tons of manual labor jobs, | [
"The release of OxyContin in 1996 was accompanied by an aggressive marketing campaign promoting the use of opioids for pain relief. Increasing prescription of opioids fueled a growing black market for heroin. Between 2000 and 2014 there was an \"alarming increase in heroin use across the country and an epidemic of ... |
So, if we established that your voice sounds different in your head, then how do singers match pitch correctly? | The difference is related to timbre. When we make sound we make one primary pitch that we associate with the sound, but also related overtones which add a color to the pitch. Different environments, i.e outside the body versus inside the head will emphasize different overtones and thus produce a different sounding voi... | [
"Voice pitch has also been identified as a factor that can affect voice recognition performance. Individuals are likely to exaggerate their memory for pitch; upon hearing a high pitched voice in an initial presentation (such as the perpetrator's voice in a crime), individuals are likely to choose an even higher-pit... |
how do we present ourselves, in terms of names and languages, to aliens in the event of first contact? | I'm not aware of any legally binding arrangements regarding first contact. So much of this depends on the nature of the aliens themselves/how they communicate, if we're reaching out to them or vice versa, WHO reaches out to them or vice versa, the nature of the contact. If the aliens send a signal to Beijing, they're n... | [
"Linguist Keren Rice posits that basic communication between humans and aliens should be possible, unless \"the things that we think are common to languages—situating in time [and] space, talking about participants, etc.—are so radically different that the human language provides no starting point for it.\"\n",
"... |
how do racing pit stops work in terms of position in the race? | You lose your position, and have to regain it - but of course, the same is true of the other teams as well, so it evens out.
Now - if you can get by with one fewer than everyone else, you may have a considerable advantage. | [
"BULLET::::- Pit board: A board that is held up from the pit wall to the side of the finishing straight when a driver goes past, to confirm their position in the race and the number of laps remaining. Before the introduction of radio communication, also used to instruct drivers to pit for fuel and/or tires, or to c... |
How much would it cost Louis XIV to build Versailles, in today's currency? | I recall in another thread that it is difficult to compare costs from that long ago because we do not know the exact market value of many of the items or how 300 year old currency compares to ours. PBS has a claim that is may have cost anywhere between 2 and 200 billion dollars. It also is not clear if that takes int... | [
"Estimates of the amount spent to build Versailles are speculative. An estimate in 2000 placed the amount spent during the Ancien Régime as US$2 billion, this figure being, in all probability, an under-evaluation. France's Fifth Republic expenditures alone, directed to restoration and maintenance at Versailles, may... |
Before instant communication how would a commander out in the battlefield know when to stop fighting if the war ended? | I can answer for World War One if you're interested. As we know, the war ended at 11:00am on the 11th November 1918, but fighting continued all day, mostly because many commanders had not got the word. It was virtually impossible to use telephone lines during the war because the cables would quickly be destroyed by she... | [
"It was not uncommon for a commanding officer to wait hours for messages over the course of a battle, making any changes of plans almost impossible. The outcome of many battles was left in the hands of the company and platoon commanders in the middle of the action, who often had less experience, had very limited ad... |
How was Quebec able to so strongly hold onto its Francophonic identity over more than a century of British rule, and later as a part of the larger Anglophonic Canadian nation? |
Yay! Question for me. You are in for a long one. Alternatively, this question could be: Why does Québec exist as Québec today?
I will use your comparison with Louisiana to better contrast with Québec. I will then discuss how Louisiana was formed. I don’t mean the State; I’ll leave others to that task. Rather, ... | [
"The Quebec Act, implemented after the British conquest of New France in the mid-1700s brought a large Francophone population under British Imperial rule, creating a need for accommodation. A century later the compromises made between the English and French speaking Fathers of Confederation set Canada on a path to ... |
the effect the "southern strategy" has had on politics in the us. | Its made it harder for democrats to win, and easier for republicans to win elections in the south. Its also polarized the major parties into either being pro-civil rights or anti-civil rights. This caused politicans in both parties to either switch their party affiliation or lose elections. | [
"In American politics, the Southern strategy was a Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters in the South by appealing to racism against African Americans. As the civil rights movement and dismantling of Jim Crow laws in the 1950s and 1960s visibly deepened existing racial... |
how do we know that raptors were smarter than t-rexs? | Basically, all we know about dinosaurs is what size and shape their bones were. In most cases we don't even know what their skin looked like. For a long time it was assumed that they were plesiomorphic (i.e., resembled the large group of reptiles they were descended from) and had scales, but now it seems like more an... | [
"Raptors are bipedal carnivores with a long, stiffened tail and had an enlarged, sickle-shaped claw on each hindfoot, which is thought to have been used to kill their prey. Males were a lot stronger than the females, as the female in the show needed one indirect dose of tranquilliser to bring her down, while the ma... |
is it possible for someone to read another language but not speak it? | Sure, there's nothing stopping you from learning the written language but not really learning how to speak it.
I had this experience with French in Highscool. I could read it reasonably well, but speaking was a challenge.
| [
"There are none of these languages in which is possible to count above three. It is not possible to translate a book, not just into the languages of the Algonquins or of the Guaranis or Paraguayans, but even into the languages of Mexico or Peru, because they lack a sufficient number of terms capable of enunciating ... |
what is the energy company doing when the power is out | Yep it's pretty much downed power lines. Reason it takes so long is because they have hundreds of crews for an area in a state, but even more hundreds of locations that need to be repaired/reconnected. The hundreds of locations get queued/scheduled for priority. It's why sometimes it can be back in an hour or so, and s... | [
"The new rules called for the Investor Owned Utilities, or IOUs, (primarily Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric) to sell off a significant part of their electricity generation to wholly private, unregulated companies such as AES, Reliant, and Enron. The buyers of tho... |
How is the universe (at least) 46 billion light years across, when it has only existed for 13.8 billion years? | The universe appears to be infinite in size, ever since the Big Bang - although what happens during and/or before the Big Bang is still very strongly under debate. The expansion of the universe is not the expansion of the *edges* of the universe - it's just that everything within the universe is getting further from ev... | [
"The proper distance—the distance as would be measured at a specific time, including the present—between Earth and the edge of the observable universe is 46 billion light-years (14 billion parsecs), making the diameter of the observable universe about 93 billion light-years (28 billion parsecs). The distance the li... |
How did the first European settlers of the new world react to new world wildlife? | Heya, I have an earlier answer on [what New World explorers thought of alligators](_URL_0_) (and mosquitos), if you're interested. | [
"The effects of the introduction of European livestock on the environments and peoples of the New World were not always positive. In the Caribbean, the proliferation of European animals had large effects on native fauna and undergrowth and damaged \"conucos,\" plots managed by indigenous peoples for subsistence.\n"... |
i didn't understand something about the marvel movies... | Loki wasn't? He could teleport, command an army of aliens, and control people's minds. I always thought the power wasn't the problem as much as the ego. | [
"In the mid-2000s, Kevin Feige realized that Marvel still owned the rights to the core members of the Avengers, which included Captain America. Feige, a self-professed \"fanboy\", envisioned creating a shared universe just as creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done with their comic books in the early 1960s. In 20... |
how does an air fryer works? | An “air fryer” is just another name for a table top sized convection oven. Instead of immersing your food in hot oil, the fryer blasts your food with superheated air. | [
"An air fryer is a kitchen appliance that cooks by circulating hot air around the food using the convection mechanism. It is a downsized version of the convection oven. A mechanical fan circulates the hot air around the food at high speed, cooking the food and producing a crispy layer via browning reactions of two ... |
what substance(s) does topical hydrocortisone block? | Steroids like hydrocortisone do reduce inflammation, which inhibits allergic and inflammatory itch but not other kinds of itch. Itch is a complicated response mediated by poorly classified pain-like neurons in the skin. They can respond to a number of things, but the classical mechanism is in response to histamine. Inf... | [
"Hydrocortisone is the pharmaceutical term for cortisol used in oral administration, intravenous injection, or topical application. It is used as an immunosuppressive drug, given by injection in the treatment of severe allergic reactions such as anaphylaxis and angioedema, in place of prednisolone in patients needi... |
Why does a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure cuff) work? | When cuff pressure is greater than systolic pressure, the artery is compressed and there is no flow through it. When it goes down to between the systolic and diastolic pressure, the pulse wave can force the artery open and blood can briefly flow through. But since the diameter of the vessel is small, this flow is turbu... | [
"The device was a system of levers hooked to a scale-pan in which weights were placed to determine the amount of external pressure needed to stop blood flow in the radial artery. Although the instrument was cumbersome and its measurements imprecise, the basic concept of Vierordt's sphygmograph eventually led to the... |
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