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how are companies affected by a speculative bubble? | Say everyone is buying tulips. So you start a tulip business. Then the bubble bursts and everyone stops buying tulips. Now you're out of business. | [
"As with all types of economic bubbles, disagreement exists over whether or not a real estate bubble can be identified or predicted, then perhaps prevented. Speculative bubbles are persistent, systematic and increasing deviations of actual prices from their fundamental values. Bubbles can often be hard to identify,... |
Curiosity question about interracial marriage | Marriage in the United States is largely governed by state laws. Miscegenation, or interracial marriage, was governed by a hodgepodge of laws from every state since the formation. During this time, different states had different races which could be barred from certain activities, and there were various tests to determine race.
In California, for example, Hispanic people were considered white in many instances, but discriminated against in others. There is the famous brown bag rule used by many private entities, in which anyone darker than a brown bag is barred or offered substandard service.
In other areas there were rules related to blood ranging from 1/4 black as being white and the one drop rule, in which any non white ancestry barred being classified as white.
With regard to miscegenation, all such laws were deemed unconditional by the supreme court in Loving v. Virginia (1967), in which a brave white and black couple openly flouted the law and provoked arrest after many warnings to leave Virginia. By doing so, they could challenge the arrest on conditional grounds under equal protection of the fourteenth amendment, and they won. Thereafter, miscegenation was unconstitutional. Before, however, laws varied from state to state. And, while it is easy to pick on the south for having many of these laws rather uniformly, these laws existed everywhere for far too long. | [
"The estimates based on the Blumstein and Schwartz study are slightly higher than estimates provided by other researchers. Hunt, based on interviews from a 1974 national study of sexual behavior, estimated that 2–4 percent of the married population is involved in open marriages. \n",
"Consequently, many interraci... |
exactly how do those nigerian scams work? | To answer your actual question and not just explain 409 scans like thomar did... (no offense thomar, I thought the same thing you did).
Basically, say you're selling something on Ebay, like a car for $10,000. The scammer buys the car, but when he sends you a check for the car, he sends you a check for $15,000. As explanation, he says something like "Oh whoops, I was sending out lots of checks, just send me a Money Order for the difference and we'll call it even".
So you deposit the scammer's check, draw up a money order, and send both to the scammer. A few days later, the bank calls you up to say that $15,000 check bounced (ie, it was a bad check) and they've taken those funds from your account. However, now the scammer has your car and your $5000, and he's not giving them back (and you can't find him to get them back).
**TL;DR - They trick you into paying them to take your car with a fake check** | [
"In Nigeria, scammers use computers in Internet cafés to send mass emails promising potential victims riches or romance, and to trawl for replies. They refer to their targets as \"Maga(s)\", slang developed from a Yoruba word meaning \"fool\" and referring to gullible white people. Some scammers have accomplices in... |
how come pet life expectancy hasn’t increased alongside human life expectancy? | It has, absolutely.
However, pet medical tech has not progressed *as much* for a few reasons:
* The mindset of "treating pets like family" is a pretty new cultural development, and only in certain parts of the world at that..
* There's not nearly as much money in the pet pharma industry as compared to human medicine, so there's less incentive to develop it as much.
* euthenasia really isn't a thing for humans. Letting great-gran fester in her own waste and confusion for the last 6 years of her life *does work to pump up the numbers a bit.* | [
"One prominent and very popular theory states that lifespan can be lengthened by a tight budget for food energy called caloric restriction. Caloric restriction observed in many animals (most notably mice and rats) shows a near doubling of life span from a very limited calorific intake. Support for the theory has be... |
When nationalism was developing in Early Modern Scandinavia, where did the Sami fit in? | I'm not quite sure what you mean here, since the Early Modern Period would in a Swedish context be defined as the period from the Reformation to 1809. But nationalism as we know it is often thought of as phenomenon that arose in the 19th century. (this is of course very simplistic but not entirely untrue)
As far back as recorded history Swedes and Sami (Lapps, 'Finns' in Viking Age usage) have been distinct (as were Swedes and Norwegians). The Roman historian Tacitus in _Germania_ writes about the _Suiones_ and _Fenni_ (probably Swedes and Sami) already around the year 100 CE, which is one of the very oldest written references to Scandinavia that has any recognizable and specific information.
If there ever was a Swedish nation-state (in the true sense of the word) it was before recorded history in _Svíþjóð_, which was roughly [the yellow area](_URL_0_), maybe a bit smaller. It was not a centralized state in any sense though, just a name for the country where the Swedes-proper (Svear) lived, who in turn were divided into many more local groupings. The blue area is the Geats (Götar) By the time you get to the time periods of the Saga literature, there's already some kind of political alliance between the Swedes and Geats, with the Swedes seemingly having power over the common king. Then there was also the Gotlanders. (Gautar)
After the Viking Age (i.e. after 1050) the Swede-Geat distinction continues to fade in importance. The term _Svíþjóð_ gives way to _Sværike_, the kingdom (rike) of the Svear. but at the same time, around 1200 Sweden starts incorporating Finland. Finland was not a state at the time, and like the Swedes had been, the Finnic peoples of the area were split into many groups (Finns-proper, Tavastians, Karelians, Savonians, etc). So Finns as we know them now came about as an amalgamation of those groups that ended up in Sweden, while others (Estonians, Livonians, Veps) weren't. - Much as 'Swedes' in its present day sense is defined by the Norse peoples who ended up under rule of the _Svear_.
Later in the Middle Ages you have the Hanseatic League arising and Visby (Gotland) and to a lesser extent Stockholm become Hanseatic cites. Sweden also enters a personal union with Denmark-Norway under a Danish king. The Swedish spoken and written in the capital around 1400 is a heavy mixture of Swedish, Danish and Low German. To the extent that _Sværike_ gets its present day name _Sverige_ (the Swedish word 'rike' didn't change - it got swapped for the Danish version 'rige' .. in the country's own name!) So anyway, point is that by the time you have the predecessor of today's Swedish state, it's far from a country belonging to a single ethnic group.
Now, in the 16th century Sweden leaves the Kalmar Union under Gustav Vasa and shakes off both Danish and Hansa influence. Being a skilled propagandist (but with a genuine hatred of the Danes) Vasa strongly emphasized the nationalist aspect of his rebellion against Christian II of Denmark. To the extent that he had his court chaplain Peder Swart plagiarize William Tell stories and substitute in Vasa as the hero travelling the countryside leading his rebellion and evading union loyalists out to get him at every turn. (in later versions this was changed further into straight-up Danish knights; rather than admit the existence of pro-union Swedes)
Now, by this point Sweden had been claiming Lapland and even taxing Lapland, through men known as _Birkarlar_. Not so much is known about the Sami at this point in time; but it's around this time that many of them are starting to take up reindeer-herding. Which is well-worth underlining; they were both nomadic and non-nomadic groups of Sami, and reindeer herding is both a relatively speaking recent custom and not one that all of them adopted. In 16th century and earlier there are various groups referred to by Swedes and Norwegians by their lifestyle; Forest Lapps, Coast Lapps and Mountain Lapps.
The Birkarl system fades out and in the 1600s Sweden gets to work on building churches, extending the government's reach to the northern parts of the country, and converting the Sami. Which is not to say that some conversion had not started already in the Middle Ages; and is in fact quite evident, for instance in that there is a much stronger veneration of the Virgin Mary in Sami culture, to this day, than the strict Lutheranism of the 17th century permitted. Another aspect of this was expanding the borders; Sweden claiming Sami-inhabited territory all the way up to Barent's Sea which Denmark-Norway also claimed. Hence there was something of a Cold War of church-building to stake claims.
So the persecution of the native Sami religion also began in earnest in this period; although only one for certain and three Sami at most were executed in the 17th century for practicing paganism (as opposed to hundreds of innocent 'witches' among the Swedes, and a half-dozen who'd converted to Catholicism).
From a contemporary Swedish perspective though, this oppression was simply demanding from the Sami much of what was demanded from their own people: Loyalty to the king and country, adherence to the Lutheran faith (not entirely distinct from the former), paying your taxes, registering births/deaths/marriages, and by the end of the 17th century, to learn to read, read the Bible and small catechism. There were some privileges too - Sami paid lower taxes, were not subject to conscription,
Finns were also 'other' but to a lesser extent. There were 'Forest Finns' who'd immigrated to the forests of Dalarna and Värmland. There were 'Tornedalen Finns' who lived up north and spoke their own variant of Finnish (Meänkieli). And there were Finns living in Stockholm; their religious congregation is mentioned from 1533 (and in fact the first sermon in Finnish was held there - not in Finland), the Bible and Catechisms had been translated into that language relatively quickly. It took 100 years until the catechism (as the second book in that language) was printed in Sami. Sweden translated Luther's Small Catechism to all the minority languages of the kingdom in that era (Russian, two dialects of Estonian, Latvian and even Lenape for the Indians living near New Sweden in America). The quality of these translations was often quite poor though.
So who is a Swede in this multi-ethnic kingdom in the 17th and 18th century? That's a much discussed question without any real consensus. The word was not used in a single way anyhow; it depended on context and who you asked. There's a recorded case from the 1680s of a Gutnish (from Gotland, Swedish since 1645) peasant who claimed to be an "honest Dane" and demanded the use of Danish measurements (1 _kande_ = 1.932 liter) for his beer rather than the Swedish standard that'd been created in 1665. (1 _kanna_ = 2.617 liter) Most often the term was used to denote what language one spoke than as a national identity (it seems, other than in cases where it could benefit you legally)
Finns and Sami were still citizens. Both groups had parliamentary representation in the 17th and 18th century. (the population of Swedish _possessions_, such as Estonia, Livonia and Pomerania did not) Yet they were still clearly culturally 'other'. If you look at 18th century Swedish writings, Scania, Halland, Blekinge, Gotland, Jämtland, Härjedalen and Bohuslän were all being written about as if they and their populations had been part of Sweden since time immemorial, despite having been part of the country for less than a century.
With the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, the idea of 'one people, one country' gained currency. Many of the allowances and exceptions the Sami had had allowing for their traditional lifestyle were curtailed, and with public schooling, the Swedish language was made mandatory for them. However, Sweden was more tolerant than the Norwegianization program, in that the principle was adopted that Sami ought to be Sami ('Lapp skall vara Lapp'), although with a prejudiced and narrow view of Sami as reindeer-herders only. Non-reindeer-herding Sami were expected to learn Swedish and assimilate.
Sources:
Larsson, Lindberg - Nationalism och nationell identitet i 1700-talets Sverige, 2002
Lerbom - För Gud och kung, släkt och vänner - Folkliga föreställningar om svenskhet under tidigt 1600-tal, Historisk Tidsskrift, 133:2, 2013
Lindmark, Sundström - De historiska relationerna mellan Svenska kyrkan och samerna, 2016 | [
"In the 20th century, Norwegian authorities put the Sámi culture under pressure in order to make the Norwegian language and culture universal. A strong economical development of the north also took place, giving Norwegian culture and language status. On the Swedish and Finnish side, the authorities were much less m... |
Did the inhabitants of a besieged city ever join the army and fight back? | Most walled cities had some sort of militia of all able-bodied men, in addition to a formal garrison, to defend their walls. In England they were called "trained bands" after 1572. More generally, in a siege, the defending commander would try to mobilise all able-bodied men to defend the walls - which was clearly in their own interest!
However, there is a big difference between being well enough trained to stand on a wall and chuck rocks at people trying to climb up ladders (requires basically four limbs and a pulse) and being well enough trained, armed, and disciplined to push back a Mongol army *in the open field*. If the city militia tried to come out to fight without their wall, well, in the first place the Mongols didn't have to accept battle. They would do a classic horse-archer retreat, filling the air with arrows as they left. When the militia got tired of milling about getting shot at, and retreated back behind the walls, the Mongols would return to their siege lines.
In the more general case, though, yes, citizens were expected to fight in defense of their city, sometimes outside the walls. London's trained bands were important in the early stages of the English Civil War, for example, when they prevented the Royalists from advancing on London (and, presumably, besieging it) at Turnham Green. Here we have a case of non-regular troops advancing outside the city limits to see off an army that would otherwise be laying siege to it. | [
"As a siege progressed, the surrounding army would build earthworks (a line of circumvallation) to completely encircle their target, preventing food, water, and other supplies from reaching the besieged city. If sufficiently desperate as the siege progressed, defenders and civilians might have been reduced to eatin... |
During the Berlin Wall, what happened with trams/trains, etc? | There were three tracked transport services in Berlin: regular (longer distance) trains, the Berlin intra-city rail system (S-Bahn) and the Metro (U-Bahn).
The S-Bahn was under East German management, and continued business in West Berlin with employees from West Berlin and East Berlin management. With the closing of the German wall, most cross-wall connections were discontinued. Friedrichstraße station became the only connection point, with strict border controls. Some West-German lines continued to run through parts of East Berlin, but didn't stop. The Former stations became known as Ghost Stations.
Because the S-Bahn was run by the DDR, West Berliners started boycotting the trains after the wall was build. Parallel bus lines were introduced and use of the S-Bahn plummeted. Maintenance was neglected and in 1980 the whole West-Berlin part of the network was closed after a strike of the western employees. Negotiations between east and west led to a partial reopening of the western network after 1984 under western management.
In the East, the network flourished and was extended.
The U-bahn network was likewise divided in two parts by the wall, with some West-Berlin lines running through Eastern territory without stops. The U-Banh, which was under Western management, profited from the S-Bahn boycott and was greatly extended during the 1961-1989 period.
Some regular long-distance trains kept running through Berlin, but the border controls were long and intensive, requiring halts of up to an hour. The GDR routed their own trains around Western Berlin. There were trains running from West Berlin to West Germany, these so-called transit trains just had passport controls and couldn't stop in East German territory. The US Army Transportation Corps, the Royal Corps of Transport (RCT) and the Train Militaire Français de Berlin had their own rolling stock and could also run trains from West Germany. These were checks by the Soviet Army at the border, instead of by East German border guards. | [
"With the conquest of Frankfurt by the US Army on March 25 1945, the tram traffic came to a complete halt. The demolition of all Mainbrücken by the Wehrmacht shortly before the end of the war had divided the network in two, the use of steel trams of types F and H as anti-tank devices, as it had happened in Berlin a... |
Why does the human brain so easily extract faces out of otherwise random visual data? | Certainly there are advantages to it, but also disadvantages.
If someone (human) is stalking you in the forest, and you're able to pick out their face from the surrounding foliage, then you've got an extra split second to fight/flight reaction. Likewise, if you can pick out the tiger/bear/etc's face just that much easier in the woods/prairies, you can defend yourself that much better.
Unfortunately, it also leads to "monster in the closet" nightmares, as we allow our over-active face identification to scare us into believing in active agents that aren't really present.
There is a fair amount of research into the face recognition processing done in the human brain - it's a fascinating topic, and much of it can be found with simple google searches. Since it's not my field, I'll let the specialists take over from here, if there are any on reddit. | [
"In 2008 IBM applied for a patent on how to extract mental images of human faces from the human brain. It uses a feedback loop based on brain measurements of the fusiform gyrus area in the brain which activates proportionate with degree of facial recognition.\n",
"In 2010, IBM applied for a patent on a method to ... |
How long does the flu vaccine actually protect you against the strains in the vaccine? | It should protect indefinitely, since your body makes memory B cells after every new exposure to a pathogen, which stay in the body for life. This is why you can never get the chicken pox twice, even if exposed to it 50 years after the initial exposure.
The reason we need to get a new flu shot every year is because the virus mutates just enough so that the memory B cells you produced as a result of last years exposure won’t be an exact match for the new virus.
Source: Immunology course in University | [
"The vaccine should be given in the muscle of the upper arm and be given in two doses for the best protection. The initial dose of the vaccine should be followed up by a booster six to twelve months later. Protection against hepatitis A begins approximately two to four weeks after the initial vaccination. Protectio... |
why doesn't the same inflation-adjusted income buy the same amount of stuff it used to? | I strongly recommend the [Consumer Price Index official website](_URL_2_), which is pretty upfront and well written about how the CPI works. [The FAQ](_URL_0_) in particular is worth reading. (Yeah, I know that the message you quote is in Canada, but sorry, I don't know anything about the Canadian counterparts to this; but I figure that the Canadian answer would be similar enough to not make this hopeless.)
One thing that has changed between 1975 and now is that the way that house prices are accounted for in the CPI changed. Back then the cost of housing was measured as the price of the house; since 1980 they measure it as [**owner's equivalent rent**](_URL_1_), which is the amount that it would cost to rent a comparable house. This is very controversial, because the CPI doesn't reflect how much it costs to own a residence, but rather how much it costs to rent it. But there is also a good argument for this approach, which is that houses are an *investment* that retains value, not a *consumable* like food (which is used up soon after it's bought) or a car (which depreciates drastically over a few years). Most of the goods in the CPI are like that, not like houses, and rent is also like that. | [
"BULLET::::- Inflation creates a redistribution of income between debtor and creditor. Specifically, inflation sacrifices the interests of creditors to benefit the debtor. For example, A borrows 10,000 dollars from B and agrees to return it after one year. Assuming inflation occurs in the year and the price doubles... |
why is gm cutting jobs and closing factories in north america? | Officially GM is trying to grow business ventures away from cars as part of a restructuring process.
Unofficially they are increasing production in Mexico and China at the expense of US + Canada to lower production costs.
IE someone put a tariff on Steel without understanding how the economy works to try to increase US steel production but it's back firing miserably. | [
"In April 2005 Wagoner took back personal control of GM's North American car division from GM North American chairman Bob Lutz and GM North American President Gary Cowger in light of its poor performance. In early June 2005 Wagoner announced that GM in the United States would close several plants and shed 25,000 em... |
Do any particles other than protons, neutrons, and electrons form atom-like structures? | You can have oppositely charged particles other than those three get bound to each other by electrostatic force and form hydrogen-like atoms, and you can replace the electrons in an atom with muons or possibly with tau particles, but if you want an atomic nucleus with more than one particle, the only way for it to be stable is protons and neutrons.
For starters, most other subatomic particles are unstable and decay in relatively short order, so they are not especially suitable for forming atoms. However, the muon (which is kind of like a heavier electron, but it decays) can take the place of an electron and form [**muonic hydrogen**](_URL_0_), or can replace one of the electrons in helium and form muonic helium. In principle you can do that to heavier chemicals as well, though it might be more difficult. Most awesomely, an anti-muon (which has positive charge) can get an electron in orbit and form [**muonium**](_URL_1_). This is pretty short-lived, though (a few microseconds). Most of this is also applicable to the tau particle, which is the last of the three leptons (the first two being the electron and muon), but its lifetime is orders of magnitude shorter than that of the muon, so it's very difficult to detect any atoms that might be formed with the tau lepton.
It's worth mentioning that the antiparticles of the proton, neutron, and electron (the antiproton, antineutron, and positron, respectively), can of course form atoms which should behave just like normal atoms, just with the charges reversed. Containing antimatter and keeping it around is difficult though, since it has the bad habit of annihilating with any regular matter it comes in contact with.
Now for the heart of the atom: you've got the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an ordinary atom. These two types of particles are about the same weight, composed of the same kinds of quarks (a proton is 2 ups and a down quark, and a neutron is 1 up and 2 downs), and importantly they interact with each other via the strong nuclear force (because they're [**hadrons**](_URL_3_), meaning that they're composed of quarks). In order to form a nucleus, you need hadrons. Protons are the only hadrons that appear to be stable in all circumstances. Free neutrons decay on the order of a few minutes, but neutrons bound in a nucleus can be stable (when they're not stable, they decay via [**beta decay**](_URL_2_)).
Hope this didn't ramble too much. | [
"Solids are made of only three kinds of particles: electrons, protons, and neutrons. Quasiparticles are none of these; instead, each of them is an \"emergent phenomenon\" that occurs inside the solid. Therefore, while it is quite possible to have a single particle (electron or proton or neutron) floating in space, ... |
Why exactly do humans, and presumably other animals, perceive different wavelengths of light as different distinct colours? | One prominent theory for color perception is to recognize good food sources, for instance, young (greener) shoots and leaves, flowers. Better color discrimination improves the ability to recognize them.
_URL_0_ | [
"Research shows that animals sensitive to more than three color channels are likely to see the world in a very different way from humans. These animals are likely to experience different and more numerous unique hues, along with additional ways of mixing them.\n",
"\"Colour vision is the faculty of the organism t... |
Are there any good maps of bronze age Mesopotamian cities (e.g., Uruk, Lagash) based on archaeological reconstruction? | Here are some sources that look at a wide variety of Mesopotamian cites from the Bronze Age. "Cultutral Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East" by Michael Roaf (1994) This book is rather pricey, at $70 new on _URL_0_ and one person, who is obviously on drugs, is offering a used copy for $7,777.92. This book has maps of twenty different Mesopotamian and Persia cities, plus Hattusha, the Hittite capital in Anatolia. The maps are usually on the small side, but the book does describe how Mesopotamian cities were organized.
A more recent book is "Historical Atlas of Mesopotamia" by Norman Bell Hunt (2004) This book has fewer maps, although the maps it does have are bigger. The illustrations in this book are better than the Roaf book, but it is much shorter and not as detailed. It is lower priced, at $17.99 on _URL_0_
You could also check out the Thames and Hudson books "The Hittites" "The Assyrians" and "Babylon". All three books focus on just one civilization. The maps are better and they delve deeply in to the archaeology that has uncovered the secrets of these ancient civilizations. All three are paperbacks and reasonably priced.
| [
"By excavating the highest levels of the city's ruins, archaeologists can study various attributes of Ugaritic civilization just before their destruction, and compare artifacts with those of nearby cultures to help establish dates. Ugarit also contained many caches of cuneiform tablets, actual libraries that contai... |
the historical background for american resistance to gun-control? | The reason guns are prevalent in the American culture is because they are a fundamental tenant of the free society invented by the Constitution. Before I go into further explanation just think about what gun control means; if you are in favor of gun control it means you have a fundamental lack of belief in a free society. You do not personally respect/believe in the ability of the average citizen to adequately run their own life...you believe they must be mistrusted and held under supervision.
A) Governments are historically much much much more dangerous than criminals. In the 20th century we had genocides in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and Turkey. We had totalitarian governments in Germany, China and the U.S.S.R. combine to kill around 100,000,000 civilians. The combination of these catastrophes dwarfs the tragedy of violent crime. The one key factor in all of these genocides is that private gun ownership was banned before they were committed. For the brief you can skip this part, but I will outline the passage of laws to ban gun ownership in these countries to be thorough:
Turkey - art. 166 1866 and the 1911 and 1915 proclamations.
Soviet Union - 1918 decree, 1920 Art. 59 & 182, Pen. code 1926.
Nazi Germany - Law on Firearms & Ammun. 1928, Weapon Law 1938, Resolutions against Jews 1938
Nationalist China - Art. 205, Crim. Code 1914, Art 186-187, Crim Code 1935
Communist China - Act of Feb 20, 1951, Act of Oct. 22, 1957
Cambodia Art. 322-328. Penal Code, Royal Ordinance 55, 1938
Rwanda Decree-Law No.12 1979
These laws required Government lists of gun owners, permits/licenses, bans on ownership, and severe penalties if caught with firearms. Everyone of these legal progressions eventually ended with an outright ban on gun ownership. If you look at the dates you will see within 1-2 decades of absolute gun-control Genocide and Tyranny start. Now, im not saying that every country that passed gun control descends into Tyranny...what i am saying is that in every tyrannical society gun-ownership is prohibited. So, civilians owning guns has a 100% success rate against genocide.
B) Gun control doesnt mean lower violent crime. You assume that we have high violent crime because we dont control our guns. That is highly delusional under statistical analysis. The most violent places are liberal, left-leaning urban centers like Chicago and D.C. (both of which have a ban on carrying guns). Clearly making guns "illegal" doesnt stop criminals from obtaining them...The north hollywood shootout --perpetrated with assault rifles, for example, occurred during the Assault rifle ban of the Clinton Era (the rifles were imported from ex-soviet bloc countries illegally). As we can see with the U.S.'s attempts at drug prohibition making a substance or device illegal *might* reduce their prevalence, but in all reality criminals will still find ways to smuggle them. This leads us to our 2nd point; Gun Bans dont stop shootings.The deadliest shooting of the century took place in Norway, Chicago is the most violent city in the U.S. and has the strictest gun control laws, Switzerland has the highest gun-ownership rates in the world and some of the lowest violent crime, and Europe as a whole has higher violent crime rates than the U.S.
C) You as a voter dont have the right to force someone else to be a victim. The police are, by definition, a REACTIVE force. They must react to a crime that has already been committed. They are called when something has gone wrong. Thus, they are not a solution for violent crime being perpetrated upon innocents. If someone assaults me with deadly force, and i live because i shoot them in self-defense thats great for me. I get to see my kids, my wife, my future. all the police would have done is put me in a body bag and look for the assailant. That sucks for me. You dont have the right to force your law-abiding peers to be victims. In the united states this right is declared explicitly in our code of laws -- if we are not felons we are allowed to have firearms to protect our life, family and property.
D) Violent crime is more related to poverty, social structure, drug use and unemployment than it is to gun ownership. The regions with high amounts of gun owners in the U.S. are the midwest and south. The regions with high violent crime are urban districts that struggle with the aforementioned problems.
In short, Americans are resistant to gun control because we know that the risk of government oppression is much more real (and historically much much deadlier -- governments were literally the most deadly thing of the 20th century. more deadly than any natural disaster, criminal or disease) than the risk posed by criminals. We know that responsible gun owners dont cause mass shootings (as evidenced by the preponderance of shootings carried out with illegal, unregistered guns that would have been smuggled regardless of law). We know that private gun ownership is a given right for every person that has not proved otherwise with a criminal history, and we know that gun ownership is not the root cause of violent crime. To ban guns would endanger our liberties, endanger our lives, and dodge the root issues that we should be working on to help the inner-city districts lower violent crime. (drug abuse, poverty, poor education, lack of stable social structures etc) | [
"The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, including proposals for making the background-check system universal, and for new federal and state legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines with m... |
While racing, how do motorcycles keep enough traction to avoid crashing while they are practically on the side of the wheel? What is the physics behind the turns? | It's a combination of purpose built tires and heat.
I won't get into the physics of how a bike starts its turn as that is outside the scope of this quesiton.
As for how motogp and racing bikes get so much lean angle its due to the tires. Those are purpose built racing tires, made of very soft (relatively speaking) rubber. This rubber when heated gets pretty soft. The heat comes from tire warmers (when in the pit) and the rest comes from friction with the road.
Go and drive on the interstate for a couple hours and stop at a rest area, feel the tires, they will be warm. (if your tires are low on air they could even be hot) This heating effect, from friction, and tire carcass deformation cause the rubber to heat up and soften. Many times the motogp tires will reach 100^o C when racing.
But the combination of heat and rubber compounds give the extreme grip needed for corners such as this. If you were to go and put sport bike tires that you could get at a local dealership on a motogp bike and have them run with those, you would not be able to get down that low, those tires are not built for it.
MotoGP bikes are worth millions, with tires in the hundreds if not thousands per set. They (the tires) are meant to only stand up to 30-40 miles before being replaced. Sport bike tires on commercial bikes need to stand up to thousands of miles and be relatively cheap to the consumer. So therefore they cannot put as soft compound or as expensive compound into the tires.
Another thing that affects grip is tread pattern (or lack thereof) the amount of tread is inversely proportional to the amount of grip a tire can give. (The less tread the more grip), Motogp tires are completely bald in this respect for maximum grip. DOT regulations require tires sold commercially to have tread to negotiate any liquids on the road.
Source: Fastest (movie), MotoGP races (commenters), _URL_1_ , _URL_0_ | [
"In addition to the road surface, vibrations in a motorcycle can be caused by the engine and wheels, if unbalanced. Manufacturers employ a variety of technologies to reduce or damp these vibrations, such as engine balance shafts, rubber engine mounts, and tire weights. The problems that vibration causes have also s... |
why do cats never seem pull muscles when they make sudden movements? | I have always just assumed it's from them stretching every second, every minute, every day. | [
"When cats are calm, they tend to stand relaxed with a still tail. If they become aggressive, the hind legs stiffen, the rump elevates but the back stays flat, tail hairs are erected, the nose is pushed forward and the ears are pulled back slightly. Because cats have both claws and teeth, they can easily cause inju... |
Why has Vienna, Austria been the home of so many historically significant persons? | Dumb question: Have there really been more historically significant people that made Vienna their home throughout history, than other comparable cities (Berlin, Paris, London, Rome)?
Is there some sort of statistic you could give me a link to? | [
"Vienna – capital of Austria and one of its nine states. It is the country's largest city, with over 1.8 million residents within an area of 414.65 km (160.10 sq mi). Vienna has a rich heritage and is considered one of the most livable cities in the world. It is the cultural center of Austria and a popular tourist ... |
What are the negative feedbacks as the earth warms? | This is a great question. A true negative feedback on CO2-induced global warming must consume the CO2 and bury it in sediment. Production of biomass from trees or blooms in the surface ocean are short term processes and have relatively rapid turnover (10s to 1000s of years). Carbon burial is a long-term geological process that occurs over 1000s to 100,000s of years. (I CO2 is doubled it takes a long time to return to a pre-perturbation baseline).
So lets take the current anthropogenic CO2 scenario and play it out in a geologic context. We are adding carbon to the atmosphere. That carbon interacts with rocks on the surface of the earth and dissolves them ( < a href=_URL_0_ weathering < /a > ). When CO2 dissolves rocks that contain silicate materials (like granite) the CO2 is consumed and ultimately buried in the ocean as calcium carbonate. In this case it takes 2 CO2 molecules to dissolve one silicate. Ultimately one is buried because when calcium carbonate is precipitated in the ocean one CO2 is also released. (I can provide more on this if you want)
When you add CO2 to the atmosphere, the temperature increases and that increases the rate of weathering. This is a result of temperature effects on the rate of the reactions as well as a result of an increase in the rate of hydrological cycling. Higher temperatures roughly equal more rain in the rainy parts of the world (not so simple as I am making it). There are additional constraints on the weathering of rocks, like the availability of weatherable material, but that is more detail than is needed here.
Now there is a second piece to this that takes out more CO2. When you weather rocks you also release the phosphorus that is present in the rocks. Ultimately the P ends up in the ocean from rivers. Phosphorus is generally considered to be the primary limiting nutrient for marine productivity. The extra P enhances marine productivity and a very small fraction of that productivity is ultimately buried in sediments and taken out of the modern carbon cycle. Over time carbon is removed from the atmosphere. The P-cycle feedback can also create some interesting overshoots where CO2 drops below pre-perturbation values.
In short: CO2 is removed from the atmosphere and is ultimately buried in sediments as calcium carbonate or organic matter. This process is one that occurs over 100,000s of years. | [
"Forcings and feedbacks together determine how much and how fast the climate changes. The main positive feedback in global warming is the tendency of warming to increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, which in turn leads to further warming. The main negative feedback comes from the Stefan–Boltzmann la... |
A Brief History of Romania? | Oh dear, I used to be incredibly good at Model UN in high school and I still have a drawer full of gavels at my parents' house from it. You don't need to know anything in particular about its history, however, but you do need to know where its policy comes from, which mostly involves learning about its recent, Ceaucescu-era problems and its subsequent rise and sort of fall in the past 10-15 years. Romania's growth in the first part of the 2000s was really incredible, and then the recession hit and all went to hell and they're really in debt to all sorts of people like the IMF. If you can tell me your specific topics/committee/etc, I can probably help a bit more, and I can also tell you about running committees and how we give points and how the format goes, unless things have changed significantly since 2005 when I was last in committee. | [
"This is a timeline of Romanian history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in Romania and its predecessor states. To read about the background to these events, see History of Romania.\n",
"His history textbook, the first Marxist synthesis of Romanian history, appeared in 1947... |
Louis is the French translation of Clovis/Chlodowig so why does the numbering of the french kings go Clovis IV > Louis I? | Louis is indeed derived from Clovis, which itself is the francicized version of the Germanic name Hlodwig which is Ludwig in modern German. In France, the name Clovis changed to Ludovic, then Louis.
Apart from the fact that Clovis and Louis look and sound different, what makes the separation in terms of numbering is how these names have been latinised on official records. Kings named Clovis were latinised as *Clodovicus*, and from Louis I on that name was latinised as *Hludovicus* or *Ludovicus*. | [
"Louis is the French form of the Old Frankish given name Chlodowig and one of two English forms, the other being Lewis (). The Frankish name is composed of the words for \"fame\" (\"hlōd\") and \"warrior\" (\"wīg\") which may be translated to \"famous warrior\" or \"famous in battle\".\n",
"BULLET::::- Clovis I –... |
What would an empty barrel cost in 1860's? | Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "barrel" as used to measure petroleum simply a unit of measure and does not imply that there is a physical barrel involved? | [
"While the standard barrel length was 7\", many Schofields were purchased as surplus by distributors, and had the barrels shortened to 5\", and were refinished in nickel. After the Spanish–American War of 1898, the US Army sold off all their surplus Schofield revolvers. The surplus Schofield revolvers were recondit... |
If all the salt in the oceans was removed and made into a single cube, how big would the cube be? | The oceans hold 97% of the Earth's water (see [this](_URL_1_) from NOAA), so we can safely just look at the oceans to consider how much saltwater there is.
From [another](_URL_1_) NOAA page, we find there are 1.4x10^(21) liters of water.
[Here](_URL_2_) we see there are about 35 grams of salt in each liter of ocean water
So put this altogether, you get 4.9 x 10^22 grams of salt.
Now the [density of salt](_URL_3_) is 2.165 grams/cm^(3), meaning the volume of all the salt would be 2.3 x 10^(16) m^(3).
This would work out to be a cube 280 km on a side.
From [yet another](_URL_0_) NOAA page:
> By some estimates, if the salt in the ocean could be removed and spread evenly over the Earth’s land surface it would form a layer more than 166 meters (500 feet) thick, about the height of a 40-story office building
This works out to cube about 290 km on a side.
This gives you an idea of how much salt there is. | [
"Developers said the cube originally contained around 69 billion cubelets. As of April 2013, there were approximately 50 layers remaining, consisting of 3.6 billion cubelets. The last layer was removed and the cube completed on 26 May 2013.\n",
"A gelatinous cube is a fictional monster from the \"Dungeons & Drago... |
Modern courts have faced the problem of the "CSI effect" (Where jurors expect incontrovertible scientific evidence like they uncover in the show). Was there a similar problem of high expectations in the late-Victorian age following the popularity of the Sherlock Holmes stories? | In a way, yes. But not exactly in the way you describe. The popularity of Sherlock Holmes and other crime dramas led to more understanding of how to examine crimes. In some cases, it even *improved* the investigations of crime.
Much as the Sherlock Holmes stories came to the public, so too did the public's investigation of crime: the press. In most cases, suspects were tried and found either guilty or not-guilty in the press long before they were tried in court. The "gutter press" was famous for having detailed (sensational) descriptions of crimes, along with theories, diagrams, and eyewitness accounts. People began to understand why, for instance, a Jewish man was not guilty of murder just because he was Jewish. Instead, they were presented with facts that became impossible to dismiss.
Of course, the press wasn't always right in their investigations, and they didn't always lead to more justice. But, their use of the scientific method to try and solve these cases, which was spurred by the popularity of the crime drama, led to much more understanding of the criminalistics and investigation among the public.
Sources:
Berenson, Edward. *The Trail of Madame Caillaux*. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Gray, Drew D. *London's Shadows: The Dark Side of the Victorian City*. London: Continuum, 2010.
Vyleta, Daniel M. *Crime, Jews and News: Vienna, 1895-1914*. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007.
Walkowitz, Judith R. *City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London*. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
EDIT: Fixed my dumb grammar. | [
"The popularity of forensic crime television shows supposedly gives rise to many misconceptions about the nature of forensic science and investigation procedures among jury members. The CSI effect is hypothesized to affect verdicts in two main ways: first, that jurors expect more forensic evidence than is available... |
If the chemical trypotran(can be found in milk, and banana's) has an effect on the production of dopamine in the brain, wouldn't that actually have the reverse effect on the body by not producing it's own natural level? | First off, you are talking about tryptophan, the amino acid? What is the exact question you are asking? | [
"Dopamine consumed in food cannot act on the brain, because it cannot cross the blood–brain barrier. However, there are also a variety of plants that contain L-DOPA, the metabolic precursor of dopamine. The highest concentrations are found in the leaves and bean pods of plants of the genus \"Mucuna\", especially in... |
How exactly does an ectopic pregnancy happen? Is it that the woman keeps passing the egg like a normal cycle before the body realizes it was fertilized? | I'm guessing that ectopic pregnancies occur due to the blastula not being properly propelled by peristalsis. Perhaps this leads to the blastula staying in the fallopian tube instead of embedding itself in the uterus.
> The mechanism for how this works confuses me. If the body didn't think it was fertilized, why wouldn't it just keep passing the egg. What is it that keeps the egg in the falopian tube that makes it keep growing?
The body would not "know" that the egg has been fertilized, it's just that the position of the blastula isn't where it should be. The blastula will still think it's on its regular course for the endometrium (uterine lining) and it'll start releasing its enzymes used to digest the protein so it can start embedding itself to form the placenta. The infant is still able to continue developing because placenta formation has to do with the different layers of the blastula, and once the placenta forms, the blastula is able to receive nutrients from the mother. | [
"Gestation, called \"pregnancy\" in humans, is the period of time during which the fetus develops, dividing via mitosis inside the female. During this time, the fetus receives all of its nutrition and oxygenated blood from the female, filtered through the placenta, which is attached to the fetus' abdomen via an umb... |
Did Ronins lose their 'Ronin' status and become a Samurai if hired? | A *ronin* is simply an unemployed *samurai* (i.e., a samurai without a position as retainer to a lord). If they obtain a position as a retainer, they cease being ronin. If they lose their positions, they become ronin. Whether ronin or retainer, they were still samurai.
In principle, being a ronin was a temporary state. In practice, it was often permanent, or only ceased when the ronin gave up his samurai status. For some - Edo Period samurai who were fired by their lord - it was meant to be permanent; they were forbidden to become retainers to another lord, and it was illegal for daimyo to employ them as retainers.
The main problem for ronin was that as samurai without positions as retainers, they were without the stipends that came with those positions. Unemployment meant no regular pay. If they could find a new position quickly enough, all would be well. If not, they could starve to death (and some did), or they could earn money as craftsmen, as guards, as mercenaries (including outside Japan), as martial arts instructors, as teachers, or become farmers, or bandits or pirates. Those who became farmers or craftsmen often gave up their samurai status (Edo Period samurai were not allowed to engage in such work, so giving up their samurai status was a way to make their work legal).
The heyday of the ronin was the end of the Sengoku Jidai and the first half-century of the Edo Period. As Japan was being unified, many daimyo and their fiefs were destroyed, their samurai becoming ronin. In the early Edo Period, there were perhaps 500,000 ronin in Japan. While the country was still at war, there was still demand for warriors, and ronin could join one side or another in a battle, and hope for a position as a retainer if (a) their side won the battle, and (b) they distinguished themselves in battle. With peace, there was less demand for warriors, and ronin often stayed ronin until their deaths. Their deaths (from old age, starvation, and battle - many ronin fought on the losing side in the Siege of Osaka Castle in 1614-1615 and rebellions against the shogunate) and giving up samurai status reduced this number, and the "ronin problem" stopped being such a huge problem. However, it didn't go away, and ronin continued to be a problem for local law and order and the shogunate.
In the peace of the Edo Period, ronin could still become retainers. Talent was one path to a position as a retainer. Another path was purchase/bribery - illegal, but practiced. Indeed, commoners could obtain samurai status, possibly including a position as a retainer, by purchase/bribery. As one samurai, Buyō Inshi, wrote,
> Some save up a sizable fortune, bid farewell to their hereditary lord, and temporarily become rōnin. They then use their savings to purchase a position as shogunal houseman. Others do the same thing: the sons of unpedigreed townspeople; those who greedily collect immoral amounts of interest by lending money at extortionate rates; the sons of blind moneylenders; and people from distant parts who have performed evil deeds in their own localities and, unable to live there any longer, turn their backs on their parents and head for Edo. Among those who obtain such shogunal housemen posts, are there not men who, having incurred the displeasure of the domain or fief holder who was their original lord, were released from his service with a ban on taking up service elsewhere? There are bound to be as well monks laicized for having breached Buddhist precepts. Perhaps there are children, too, of monks bound to adhere strictly to the precept [of celibacy]. There may also well be, further down the order, pariahs and outcasts and their ilk. The reason for this is that the only thing held to matter is money, and not the caliber of the person.
He wrote about the problems faced by ronin - poverty, unemployment, starvation - and the problems that resulted for wider society, such as violence, crime, and corruption. A major root of the problem, as he saw it, was the change from society being run by warriors to society being run by money, and the problems of and by ronin were symptoms of this underlying social disorder.
Reference:
Buyō Inshi, *Lust, Commerce, and Corruption: An Account of What I Have Seen and Heard, by an Edo Samurai*, edited by Mark Teeuwen, et al., Columbia University Press, 2014. | [
"Because the former samurai could not legally take up a new trade, or because of pride were loath to do so, many \"rōnin\" looked for other ways to make a living with their swords. Those \"rōnin\" who desired steady, legal employment became mercenaries that guarded trade caravans, or bodyguards for wealthy merchant... |
what is happening mechanically different between a decent golfer and a world class competing professional golfer? why can they make their ball for so much further? | The faster you swing, the harder it is to hit the ball accurately. It takes practice and control to be able to hit the ball further *and* hit it where you want it to go.
But distance is only part of the game. There is accuracy, there is knowing what club to use, and then there is the short game. Most holes are par 4 and you'll have 1-2 strokes while on the green. That means 25% to 50% of your strokes is going to be with a putter trying to get the ball into the hole and that takes an entirely different set of skills. | [
"There are many types of golf balls on the market, and customers often face a difficult decision. Golf balls are divided into two categories: recreational and advanced balls. Recreational balls are oriented toward the ordinary golfer, who generally have low swing speeds ( or lower) and lose golf balls on the course... |
How was the Soviet Union able to develop such a great spy network before WWII despite being a country less than 30 years old? | Spy networks don't really have much to do with the 'age' of a country. Britain's Secret Service MI6 was only officially founded in 1903, and until WWI it was mostly concerned with Irish rebels and Fenian terrorists.
They way the USSR, the way almost any nation builds a spy ring, is recruiting within foreign nations. The way the USSR built up a very successful spy ring within Great Britain, for example, was famously at Cambridge University. You may have heard of the Cambridge Five? They were Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, and an unknown fifth man.
Philby, for example, was a student of history at Trinity College, was a member of the Cambridge Socialist Society, and a card carrying member of the British Labour Party, which made him a prime candidate for Soviet Recruiters in Britain. Later on he learned Russian, and as such was eventually recruited by the British Secret Service during WWII working with Alan Turing's team on the enigma codes at Bletchley Park. He was able to crack German codes, read them for any reference to the USSR, then report that information to his handlers. It's alleged that Stalin received advanced warning of the German Operation Barbarossa this way.
I couldn't really give you much information on recruitment in countries outside of the UK, but I imagine it was much the same.
A couple of good books, especially about the Cambridge Five, are:
* *Spycatcher* by Peter Wright
* *Kim Philby and the Great Betrayal* by Ben Mcintyre | [
"One of the biggest successes of Soviet foreign intelligence was the penetration of the American Manhattan Project, which was the code name for the effort during World War II to develop the first nuclear weapons of the United States with assistance from the United Kingdom and Canada. Information gathered in the Uni... |
why does my stomach still hurt in the same place after my gallbladder's been removed? | this is kind of late but i hope you see this- it might be worth checking it out at the doctors and getting an ultrasound done, if you have the moneys for it. i've heard that you can actually form gallstones in your liver post-cholecystectomy, if you have a super-shitty diet. | [
"The gallbladder can be affected by gallstones, formed by material that cannot be dissolved – usually cholesterol or bilirubin, a product of haemoglobin breakdown. These may cause significant pain, particularly in the upper-right corner of the abdomen, and are often treated with removal of the gallbladder called a ... |
hong kong and macau | > Are they censored like the rest of China?
Not in a sense that there's a Chinese Great Firewall. People still have a freedom of speech, religion, and such. IIRC, Wall Street Journal still ranks Hong Kong as the world's freest economy for the pass 20+ years.
> Do they have their own leaders?
Technically yes, but they are some where between a leader and a figure head. They are elected by a committee hand picked by China. Most of the time the leaders makes most of their decisions, but China still has a huge influences on some issues.
> Are either of them fighting for independence?
There's always some talk about it, but it's not going to happen. It's just like Rhode Island wants to secede from United States. They don't benefit from it and the "rest of the country" is not letting it happen.
Additional info. The former leader of China Deng Xiaoping pledge to keep Hong Kong and Macao unchanged for 50 years after the returns. Hong Kong (and Macao to a certain extend) became wealthy capitalist because they are the only bridge between China and the West. Back in the day, most goods needs to be exported/imported through Hong Kong. However, as China opens up their ports/trade this is no longer the case. Though, Macao still got gambling and it's one of the very few places in China with legal casinos. | [
"Hong Kong and Macau are special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China. The governments of Hong Kong and Macau do not use the official PRC ethnic classification system, nor does the PRC's official classification system take ethnic groups in Hong Kong and Macau into account. As a result, minority ... |
what is the science behind travel constipation? | sitting for long periods of time in a very low humidity atmosphere (in an airplane at least) drys out your whole body. | [
"She has published six books on health and wellbeing: \"Move, Nourish, Believe: The Fit Woman's Secret Revealed\" (2011), \"MORE of the Fit Woman's Secrets\" (2013), \"NOURISH - The Fit Woman's Cookbook\" (2014), \"INSPIRED\" (2015), \"Love You\" (2017), and \"Eat Good Food\" (2018).\n",
"It has been considered a... |
why do some comedy shows have canned laughter, or live audience laughter but most comedy movies don't? and why have the laughter anyway? | Lots of studies have shown that people tend to laugh more when other people are laughing. There's something very social about it. That isn't to say they will think the material is any funnier. So using laugh tracks works for television.
It isn't used in movies because movies were designed to be viewed in theaters full of people. If the movie is funny, the laugh track is all the people sitting around you. | [
"Contrary to common annoyance of canned laughter in television shows, television studios have discovered that they can increase the perceived \"funniness\" of a show by merely playing canned laughter at key \"funny\" moments. They have found that even though viewers find canned laughter highly annoying, they percei... |
What factors determine the speed of sound? Are there different speeds of sound for each planet's atmosphere? | The speed of sound in an ideal gas is determined by:
a = sqrt( ( rho * R * T ) / M )
- a = speed of sound (m/s)
- sqrt() = square root
- rho = specific heat ratio of the gas (dimensionless)
- R = universal gas constant (8.3145 J/mol*K)
- T = temperature (K)
- M = molar mass of the gas (kg/mol)
An interesting thing to note is that the density of the gas doesn't affect the speed of sound, only temperature and composition. | [
"In the Earth's atmosphere, the chief factor affecting the speed of sound is the temperature. For a given ideal gas with constant heat capacity and composition, the speed of sound is dependent \"solely\" upon temperature; see Details below. In such an ideal case, the effects of decreased density and decreased press... |
billion gets b, million gets m, why does thousand get k??? | It's derived from the Greek work khilioi, which meant thousand. The Greek didn't have a word for million. The largest number they had a name for was 10,000, which was a myriad. So we use more modern naming mechanisms for numbers larger than that. | [
"The letter \"K\" is commonly used to denote \"thousand\" (e.g., \"She earns $80K\"), even though this is inconsistent with the lowercase \"k\" in SI. This usage has largely replaced the letter \"G\" (for \"grand\", used almost exclusively for money) and the Roman numeral \"M\" that was commonly used for \"thousand... |
how express shipping works, how hard would it be to make all packages arrive in 2 days opposed to 5-8? | Companies have a supply chain process that is optimized for low cost. For example, if a truck is half full, they'll wait until more orders come in before sending it out.
But priority orders go into a special truck, and that truck leaves whether it is full or not. And that truck loads its cargo onto an airplane instead of a train.
Basically, shipping is a multistep process, and at every step, there is a way to move our stuff to the head of the line. For a price. | [
"Priority Mail Express is an accelerated domestic mail delivery service operated by the United States Postal Service. It is able to provide overnight delivery to most locations within the continental United States and guaranteed delivery within 2 days. Unlike most other USPS delivery options which provide only deli... |
After being liberated by the Allies in WWII, what did communities in France, Poland and other occupied countries treat women who fraternized with German Solidiers? | badly. here's a previous post on this:
[There are pictures of women from France who after their liberation from the Nazi's were publicly shamed with their hair being shaved off and other similar acts for fraternizing with Nazi soldiers... but what happened to these women after the initial shaming act?](_URL_0_) | [
"It is estimated that a minimum of 34,140 women from occupied states were forced to work as prostitutes during the Third Reich. In occupied Europe, the local women were often forced into prostitution. On 3 May 1941 the Foreign Ministry of the Polish government-in-exile issued a document describing the mass Nazi rai... |
why are car keys use different mechanisms (sliding pins?) then our normal house keys? what are the advantages/disadvantages? | Keys can only be inserted one way into pin locks. Wafer locks, for example, allows insertion two ways. That means less fiddling about trying to insert the key into a keyhole that can be hard to see and is sometimes obscured by the steering wheel. | [
"The first iteration, released in 2005, did not feature mechanical key switches, but in addition to the blank keycaps, it featured a Model-M-inspired design, and individually weighted keypresses, because some keys are pressed with less force than other keys.\n",
"A switchblade key is basically the same as any oth... |
Why was the Ottoman Empire unable to mass convert Christians in the Balkans like previous Caliphates in the middle east? | The current makeup of the Balkans is not quite reflective of its demographics during the Ottoman Empire. It's like asking, "Why was the Ottoman Empire unable to convert the Jews on the West Coast of Israel, but the West Bank of Palestine is almost entirely Muslim?" The reality is that a huge movement of people occurred in the late stages of the Ottoman Empire and after its fall.
After World War I and the Turkish War of Independence, the Greeks and Turks signed the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations. The treaty established a mandatory exchange of citizens between Greece and Turkey according to religious faith, rather than native language, equaling about 1.3 million orthodox Christians from Turkey relocated to Greece, as well as about half a million Muslims relocated to Anatolia from Greece. This came after and in addition to the natural flows of refugees and immigrants toward the respective religious safe areas. Anatolia had recently been further Christianized by the Armenian genocide.
Prior to this, Turkey had not been so uniformly Muslim, and the Balkans so uniformly Christian. The middle east was also more Christian at the time, with Christians still representing a double digit percentage of the population in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent.
The Ottoman Empire practiced a millet system which segregated its population according to confessions and allowed Christian communities autonomy and exemption from Sharia law, which may have contributed, though that was not unique to the Ottomans. Most likely, the Ottomans just were not in South Eastern Europe for long enough, and the majority of their converts returned to Muslim states either voluntarily or against their will by 1923.
| [
"The pre-Islamic Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine and Sassanian empires. The Roman–Persian Wars between the two had devastated the region, making the empires unpopular amongst local tribes. Furthermore, in the lands that would be conquered by Muslims many Christians (Nestorians, Monophysites, Jacobites an... |
why do many european countries have baby-naming laws? | It's a child protection thing. They don't want a child to have to live with a name that is inappropriate/offensive or that will cause the child trouble growing up. | [
"Nations other than the U.S., in modern times, may have laws with comparable intent or effect and that constrain employment of women or of other groups of adults defined by characteristics at birth, although the laws may not be called by the same name.\n",
"Many culture groups, past and present, did not or do not... |
how do generators turn mechanical energy into electrical energy? | There are ways to convert vibrations into electrical energy (every microphone does that), but typically generators are specifically using rotation. More specifically, rotation of a magnet. Faraday's law states that whenever a magnetic field changes, an electric field is produced. When you move a magnet, a point in space near that magnet experiences changes in the direction and intensity of the magnetism it is experiencing. This creates an electric field at that point, which is the force that acts on electrically charged things to move them. Moving electrical charges are otherwise known as electric current. So when you move a magnet near a wire, there will be current through that wire. | [
"An electric generator is a device that converts mechanical energy to electrical energy. A generator forces electrons to flow through an external electrical circuit. It is somewhat analogous to a water pump, which creates a flow of water but does not create the water inside. The source of mechanical energy, the , m... |
why isn't imgur integrated into reddit? | What do you mean integrated? With RES, imgur (and many other image-hosts) are pretty well "integrated" into the site, as far as being able to quickly view the images. | [
"The company was started in 2009 in Athens, Ohio as Alan Schaaf's side project while he attended Ohio University for computer science. Imgur was created as a response to the usability problems encountered in similar services. Designed to be a gift to the online community of Reddit, it took off almost instantly, jum... |
how can oil wells drill horizontally? | Think of a straw that bends in the middle. Now connect a drill bit to one end and some hydraulics to bend the bendy joint. Bending the joint alters the aim of the drilling bit [enabling it to be steered](_URL_0_) to a horizontal position from a vertical one, eventually. | [
"The oil well is created by drilling a long hole into the earth with an oil rig. A steel pipe (casing) is placed in the hole, to provide structural integrity to the newly drilled well bore. Holes are then made in the base of the well to enable oil to pass into the bore. Finally a collection of valves called a \"Chr... |
- older people always say their arms, legs, wrists, etc. hurt just before it starts raining. why is this? | Arthritis can make your joints more sensitive to changes in barometric pressure that occur just before it rains. The same an happen in younger folks who have broken bones that have later healed. | [
"In younger people, these fractures typically occur during sports or a motor vehicle collision. In older people, the most common cause is falling on an outstretched hand. Specific types include Colles, Smith, Barton, and Chauffeur's fractures. The diagnosis is generally suspected based on symptoms and confirmed wit... |
why do we have over 18,000 unaffiliated police departments in the united states? why isn't there a single government agency that unites them? | Because there are lots of levels of legal authority in the US, and they are largely independent of each other (by Constitutional design). Federal laws are not the same as state laws, which are different from county or city ordinances. And sometimes they conflict. No single agency has the authority to enforce all those different laws, and even when the laws coincide, the heavy lifting is often left to the lowest level of authority that can effectively do it. For example, a murder investigation is generally done by the city PD where it happens, because they can do a local investigation best... the case will then be prosecuted by the locals _unless_ it's part of a bigger batch of crimes - like a multi-state crime spree - that needs interstate authority, and then the FBI or some other fed agency gets involved.
For the most part, a state trooper or FBI agent isn't going to write you a parking ticket. And a county sheriff's deputy isn't usually going to be running a murder investigation. Now, if a cop witnesses you breaking the law, they may be able to hold until the proper authorities do arrive, but maybe not. Each of those areas may cooperate with neighboring areas, but they might just as well jealously guard their independence.
A good example is the recent dustup in the South & Southwest over using local cops to do immigration enforcement. The short answer, from a legal perspective, is: they can't. State, county, or local cops are not authorized to make immigration busts for the simple fact that states, counties, and cities don't make immigration law. Only the federal gov't can do that, so only the federal gov't can enforce those laws. ICE may sometimes use local cops for additional manpower on larger raids, but the busts are all ultimately under the authority of ICE (or whoever). | [
"Larger agencies have the resources to have separate units for internal affairs, but smaller agencies - which do not have the luxury - are more common, with 87% of police departments in the United States employing 25 or fewer sworn officers. Smaller agencies that do not have sufficient resources may have the execut... |
what is falun gong, and why does the chinese government hate them so much? | I probably wouldn't tell a five year old this, but here is the simple version.
Falun Gong is a cult (they believe crazy things about aliens, and think scientists are evil), and the people who run it live in America and do things to upset the chinese government. They tell other people living in China to protest the government, and they tell lies about the government.
Now the chinese government also has bad people in it. These bad people think it is important that people in Falun Gong stay quiet and don't disrespect them, and they don't care if the people who do Falun Gong are hurt. So they hurt them until they are quiet.
A lot of chigung (the special exercises that Falun Gong do), can be performed for free by anyone in squares all across China, and the government doesn't mind this. They just hate Falun Gong because they are noisy and embarrass them.
So bad people in America tell stupid people in China to annoy their government, and then the Chinese government (who are also bad) hurts them.
Edit: Seeing as someone disagrees with me: Sources
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
Wacky highlight from the second link:
> The aliens have introduced modern machinery like computers and airplanes. They started by teaching mankind about modern science, so people believe more and more science, and spiritually, they are controlled. Everyone thinks that scientists invent on their own when in fact their inspiration is manipulated by the aliens. In terms of culture and spirit, they already control man. Mankind cannot live without science.
> The ultimate purpose is to replace humans. If cloning human beings succeeds, the aliens can officially replace humans. Why does a corpse lie dead, even though it is the same as a living body? The difference is the soul, which is the life of the body. If people reproduce a human person, the gods in heaven will not give its body a human soul. The aliens will take that opportunity to replace the human soul and by doing so they will enter earth and become earthlings.
> When such people grow up, they will help replace humans with aliens. They will produce more and more clones. There will no longer be humans reproduced by humans. They will act like humans, but they will introduce legislation to stop human reproduction.
| [
"Falun Gong is a Chinese qigong discipline involving meditation and a moral philosophy rooted in Buddhist tradition. The practice rose to popularity in the 1990s in China, and by 1998, Chinese government sources estimated that as many as 70 million people had taken up the practice. Perceiving that Falun Gong was a ... |
Why are the chances of War within the Developed world so low? | This is a huge debate in the international relations field known as the [democratic peace theory](_URL_0_). There are plenty of explanations for it but none so convincing to be completely accepted. It could be due to the structure of democracies themselves- leaders are used to negotiation and compromise and are held accountable for their actions by the people. It may also be the nature of the developed world itself- we find trade to be much more favorable than war and prefer more peaceful options of conflict resolution. Or perhaps its a cultural issue- the Western democracies were forced into an us vs. them mentality during the Cold War and our shared culture prevents feelings of aggression and hostility.
Interestingly enough, while democracies don't declare war against other democracies, they aren't necessarily more peaceful than non-democracies. It is up for debate whether non-democracies or democracies are actually more warlike. | [
"On the supply side, it has been observed that wars sometimes have the effect of accelerating progress of technology to such an extent that an economy is greatly strengthened after the war, especially if it has avoided the war-related destruction. This was the case, for example, with the United States in World War ... |
What is the history of the Irish Travellers? What writings are out there that pertain to them? Do we know how they came to live a nomadic lifestyle? | Traveller history is a highly contentious subject, because it is tied up with their identity and right to continue their itinerant lifestyle. The idea is that if Travellers are really just displaced or dispossessed people (as has been argued), the best "solution" is to re-settle them. This was the basic finding of the 1963 Commission on Itinerancy, which started under the assumption (in fairly unfortunate wording) that “there can be no final solution to the problem created by itinerants until they are absorbed into the general community."
Now, the real answer to this question is probably a variety of factors, with no one clear origin. But due to the contentiousness of the issue, certain "explanations" have become popular, which I'll outline:
* One traditional view of Travellers is as displaced landowners from the Cromwellian invasions, and similar claims have been made that they are made up of people evicted during the Famine.
* Many Travellers themselves point to a pre-Gaelic origin, asserting that they are the "original" inhabitants of the island.
* Connections have been made to the Romani and other itinerant groups on the continent.
* Travellers have also traditionally held professions that would have been conducive to being on the road, prompting a "chicken-and-egg" kind of debate (did they take up those jobs because they were on the road, or did they go on the road because of their jobs?).
The evidence for and against these claims is similarly complicated, but includes
* The traditional Traveller language, known as Shelta, Gammon, or Cant, has many words of Romani origin, but is mainly influenced by Irish and English.
* A 2011 genetic study found Travellers to be a distinct genetic population from settled Irish people, and claimed that the populations split up to 1,000 years ago.
* The popularity of certain surnames such as McCarthy, which also show up among the Gaelic nobility driven out by Cromwell, has been used to suggest the displaced families theory.
* The term "tinker," which describes the metalwork traditionally done by Travellers and has been used as both an endo- and exonym for the group, shows up as "tynker" or "tynkler" in the 12th century, although whether or not it was linked with a class of nomadic people is debated.
One issue that we have is that Travellers are not well distinguished from the general settled population in most literature before about the 19th century. Míceal Hayes mentions the issues surrounding the documented history (or lack thereof) of Travellers in his article "Indigenous Otherness: Some Aspects of Irish Traveller Social History," noting that
> The social history of Travellers remained undocumented under colonialism, as successive British administrations did not distinguish between Travellers and the Irish poor generally. Consequently, there are real limits to what the sources can tell us about the history of the Irish Travellers. Those historical records that do exist simply highlight the relative invisibility of Travellers as a group in Irish society.
Really, the answer is probably a mix of all of the above. In every society, there are people who take to the road due to economic and social pressures, or just because they prefer the lifestyle. The popular song "O'Sullivan's John," written by the Pecker Dunne, tells the (supposedly true) story of a settled man who marries a Traveller woman and joins her. Presumably, whatever their origins, Travellers have picked up quite a few such people along the way, and it may be hard to find the "original" Travellers among all the others that have joined throughout the centuries. They have also mixed with other itinerant groups like the Romani, although this is more the case in Britain than it is in Ireland, where Romani populations are fairly low compared to the rest of Europe.
The "displaced persons" idea has been largely discredited, mainly because, while there were indeed many such people during the various invasions, wars, and famines throughout Irish history, there is little contemporary evidence that a significant group decided en masse to stay on the road indefinitely. Again, some of those displaced people probably were absorbed into the Traveller population, but that population seems to have existed long before Cromwell set foot on the island. Other, more fanciful ideas, such as Travellers being a lost tribe of Israelites, have been similarly rejected. The best we can say is that there were probably a combination of factors that have contributed to the Traveller community.
I'd like to plug the [audio documentary](_URL_1_) I made as part of my masters dissertation on singing and music in the Traveller community, which deals with Traveller identity as they become increasingly settled. The accompanying [written commentary](_URL_0_) includes a brief summary of some of the history, and also has a transcription in case the accents are too confusing (they get very thick!). | [
"The historical origins of Irish Travellers as a distinct group is still unknown. It continues to be the subject of academic and popular debate. Research has been complicated by the fact that the group appears to have no written records of its own.\n",
"Deeper documentation of Shelta and the Travellers dates to t... |
what makes some people naturally better at sports than others, even as children who have had similar levels of sporting experience? | I always found that there wasn't much disparity at a young age but once testosterone starts kicking in men begin to have superior (on average) strength and other athletic abilities. But genes and mindset can sometimes overcome this. In high school I would say that I could destroy a girl at basketball but there was this one girl on the girls basketball team who had some god given gift. She would practice with the guys team after school sometimes and she easily held her own. | [
"With regular participation in a variety of sports, children can develop and become more proficient at various sports skills (including, but not limited to, jumping, kicking, running, throwing, etc.) if the focus is on skill mastery and development. Young people participating in sports also develop agility, coordin... |
how do spoilers to unreleased movies, games, and books get released? | Next time you watch a movie, watch the credits.
Count the names and imagine how hard it is to have a project with that many people, keep the spoiler-y information away from all or most of them, and then hope that nobody who knows spills the beans.
Same with games. Somewhat easier with books, but I do remember the (since debunked) stories that factory workers manning the machines of Harry Potter 7 were forced to work in the dark so they wouldn't have access to the story before the release. | [
"The Spoiler is a 2011 dark comedy novel written by British author Annalena McAfee. The novel was first published by Harvill Secker on 2 May 2011, with Knopf republishing the book in the United States on April 10, 2012.\n",
"A spoiler is an element of a disseminated summary or description of any piece of fiction ... |
what would happen if countries just stopped obeying the geneva convention? | The reason that countries obey the Geneva Conventions is so that other countries will.
If Freedonia is at war with Oceania, then if Freedonia starts ignoring the Conventions, their own soldiers may no longer be protected by it if Oceania decides to ignore it as well. | [
"The Geneva Conventions are four related treaties adopted and continuously expanded from 1864 to 1949 that represent a legal basis and framework for the conduct of war under international law. Every single member state of the United Nations has currently ratified the conventions, which are universally accepted as c... |
Did the name "The United States" stem from The United Kingdom? | No, it did not -- while the Declaration of Independence (1776) is the "unanimous declaration of the thirteen United States of America," the term "United Kingdom" was not used for the political union of the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland until after the Acts of Union (1800) actually united them. The OED has a reference to a "united Kingdom" from 1690 and another from 1737, but it wasn't until the 1800 Acts that the formal name came into being. The prior "united Kingdom" was a personal union.
The OED references for context:
> 1690 tr. G. Petyt Lex Parliamentaria (ed. 2) xi. 217 A like Clause for incapacitating Persons to be elected, & c. Members of Parliament, and likewise for incapacitating Members of Parliament, with like Restrictions, Exceptions and Penalties (throughout the united Kingdom) as are contained in the Statute 4 & 5 Annæ.
> 1737 Gentleman's Mag. Oct. 609/1 I have more Reason to oppose it, than any Man in this House, nay perhaps than any Man in the United Kingdom.
> 1800 Act 39 & 40 Geo. III c. 67. 359 The said Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland shall..be united into one Kingdom, by the name of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. | [
"The Treaty of Union and the subsequent Acts of Union state that England and Scotland were to be \"United into One Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain\", and as such \"Great Britain\" was the official name of the state, as well as being used in titles such as \"Parliament of Great Britain\". Both the Acts and the ... |
I am a sailor aboard a German U-Boat during WWII, What is my daily routine, what is my life like? | Well, all of those questions completely depend on the era of the war that you sailed in. In 1940, most patrols were extremely short (at most, two weeks). They were short for a variety of reasons, mainly that Uboats had next to free reign across the shipping routes; most were able to sail out, attack a convoy on the surface at night, and sail back to port within a few weeks. Allied sonar was relatively weak, radar was nonexistent, and most convoys, early on at least, barely had an escort of more than two ships, if they were lucky.
In this time, food would be relatively fresh for the whole two week patrol.
Later on in the war, once larger uboats became viable, uboats were sent into the Indian Ocean, in Operation Monsoon. IXC and IXD2 type boats would be on patrol for over half a year at times. Wolfgang Luth, the second most successful commander in the war, led U-181, an IXD2 ship, on the second longest patrol in the war. Food never completely ran out; however, after the first month, the fresh food was spoiled, and preservatives were the way to go. Eventually, they had to eat shark (which smelled horrible and tasted bad because they boiled the meat). They were resupplied by a Japanese cargo ship, and the crew was repulsed by the poor quality of food.
As it goes, the later on in the war, the poorer the food quality became, as it was on every front. Ironically, the XXI class boats were some of the first submarines equipped with refrigerators. | [
"The German sailors initially served in their Second World War uniforms, with the German Eagle and the Swastika removed, and under the same rules and regulations as were valid in the \"Kriegsmarine\". The sailors were paid a moderate wage and had the right to take local leave, unlike other German POWs, but service ... |
why don't attics have proper floors? | They are just unfinished rooms - they keep the floors open so you have access to the ceiling of the house so you can make adjustments to wiring and other in-wall items.
That said, you can get a finished attic. | [
"An attic (sometimes referred to as a \"loft\") is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building; an attic may also be called a \"sky parlor\" or a garret. Because attics fill the space between the ceiling of the top floor of a building and the slanted roof, they are known for being awk... |
How can gravity bend light if the speed of light is constant? | Light *doesn't* have a constant speed. In a curved spacetime, the coordinate speed of a distant light ray need not be *c*. | [
"In general relativity, light follows the curvature of spacetime, hence when light passes around a massive object, it is bent. This means that the light from an object on the other side will be bent towards an observer's eye, just like an ordinary lens. In General Relativity the speed of light depends on the gravit... |
What is the earliest documented interaction between a foreign country, and Australian Aboriginals? | If by "documented" you mean refer only to surviving, contemporary written accounts, then the first documented encounter between Australians and non-Australians occurred on February 26, 1606. On that day, a Dutch expedition led by Willem Janszoon, made landfall near Weipa, Queensland, in Awngthim country. Hostilities with the Awngthim and the Dutch cut that encounter short, and Dutch continued to face a hostile reaction until the reached the Wik-Mungkana, near present-day Aurukun Mission Station (about 100 km / 62 miles south of Weipa). The Wik-Mungkana allowed the Dutch to set up a camp on the beach, collect water, and trade tobacco, but this young friendship quickly soured too. In Wik-Mungkana oral history, the cause of the conflict was the Dutch sexually harassing (if not outright raping) the women and forcing the men to hunt for them. The Dutch accounts are less specific - they weren't terribly concerned with understanding the motives of people deemed "cruel black barbarians." After this botched attempt at peaceful interaction, the Dutch turned back and returned to the East Indies.
Now, if by "documented," you mean encounters for which we have evidence for today but weren't necessarily written about at the time, that opens up a whole range of possibilities. I'll work my backwards through time.
Prior to the arrival of the Dutch, there may have been other encounters with Europeans - mainly Portuguese - that were either never recorded or their records have since been lost. [This 1543 map](_URL_0_), for example, shows a peculiar western lobe of South America, which has a coastline suspiciously similar, in broad strokes, to that of Western Australia. It has another landmass south of Indonesia known as Jave la Grande or Java Major, a semi-legendary land mentioned by Marco Polo as a the largest island in the world, which might be a reference to Australia, with this map confusing the two landmasses as separate locations.
Prior to British colonization and probably prior to European contact in general, here's a long history of interaction between people on the Top End of Australia and in the Kimberley with people from Indonesia and perhaps mainland Asia. By the late-1700s and early-1800s, a thousand Macassan fishermen from Indonesia arrived in Arnhem Land each year to trade with the Yolngu and fish for trepang, an edible sea cucumber that was popular in Chinese markets. The Yolngu would work with the Macassans, and some even joined the crews of vessels sailing back to Indonesia. In general, in Arnhem Land the relationship between the Macassans and the local people was quite good. In the Kimberley, it seems that in the historic period at least, the relationship was considerably worse, with the Macassans needing to fortify their camps and the Kimberley peoples accusing the Macassans for violating the wurnan law that governed trade in the region. While the Macassan trade was well established by the 1700s, there's some debate on exactly when it got started. Australian artwork depicting Macassan praus date back to at least 1664 and possibly as early as 1517. Carbon dating on the oldest known trepanger camps indicate that they were established by at least 1520 and possibly as early as 1170 - though it's also suggested that the particularly old dates are due to indigenous activities at the sites which pre-date the arrival of Indonesian fishermen. Also dating to the 12th Century is a coin found on an island off the coast of Arnhem Land. It had been minted in Kilwa, the dominant city-state on the East African coast at the time, though its uncertain whether the coin got to Australia as part of the contemporary Indian Ocean trade network or if it arrived much later via hypothetical Portguese explorers (where were also known to have sacked Kilwa as Portugal asserted its power into the Indian Ocean trading sphere).
Yolngu oral traditions also talk about the Baijini, a people who pre-dated the Macassans but otherwise were quite similar. The Baijini came from the north, brought tamarind trees, traded, and fished for trepang. They were also known for being rice farmers and, unlike the Macassans, they seem to have come as settlers too, bringing women too and building houses, rather being seasonal visitors. When they came to Australia, they were met by the Djanggawul - the Ancestors of the Yolngu. There's a lot of speculation concerning the identity of the Baijini. Are they the Ancestors of the Macassans? Are they another group of Indonesians? Are they Chinese? Are they a historic group at all? A lot of questions here with no answers as of yet.
Going back even further, by 2500 years ago at least, Austronesian-speaking Melanesians arrived in the Torres Strait Islands and began interacting with the Australians in the area. While there was conflict between the group, there was also peaceful interactions too. Historically speaking, spears made in Cape York were in high demand on the islands as the were ideally suited for hunting dugong. The people of Cape York, in turn, learned how to make sailing outrigger canoes from the Torres Strait Islanders, and spread that knowledge even further south.
Going back even further still, around 4000 years ago, there appears to have been notable migration of peoples from India into Australia, which is still detectable today in Australian genetics. Unfortunately the circumstances surrounding this event is currently unknown. Also around this time, the dingo arrives in Australia from the north. Again, whether these events are related or the timing is coincidental is unknown. | [
"According to a 2013 German study by a team of researchers on Indigenous Australian DNA genes reveal that a wave of migrants from India arrived in Australia about 4,230 years ago. It shows that the Indian migrants settled in Australia before Captain James Cook's first recorded contact with the Australian coastline.... |
if you have a miscarriage pretty far into pregnancy, what happens to the baby thats inside the body? | You give birth to it. In very very rare cases the body forms a cyst around it and the fetus becomes calcified and stays in the body | [
"Most clinically apparent miscarriages (two-thirds to three-quarters in various studies) occur during the first trimester. About 30% to 40% of all fertilized eggs miscarry, often before the pregnancy is known. The embryo typically dies before the pregnancy is expelled; bleeding into the decidua basalis and tissue n... |
How different was the treatment and persecution of witches in areas controlled by the Spanish Inquisition in comparison to the rest of Europe? | Witch hunting was more of a Central-Northern European thing, so the scale of persecution in Spain (with the exception of Euskadi) was much lower than in, say, Germany. See this [map](_URL_0_). The Spanish inquisition main target was, after all, the *conversos* (muslims and jews, forced to convert to catholicism after the Reconquista), and to a lesser extent, Protestants. This was actually the reason that 'propelled' the Crown to establish it in the first place.
> "The new tribunal of 1480 soon extended its authority over both Castile and Aragon. Its express purpose was to deal with the religious practices of the ‘conversos’ of Jewish origin. Virtually all the people it arrested and examined in the first thirty years of its existence were conversos" Golden Age Spain, Kamen
According to Kamen, the inquisition attitude towards witchcraft was fairly progressive for the time. I'd take this claim with a grain of salt though (Kamen do tend to 'overreact' a bit in rehabilitating the Inquisition. But consider that, after all, he's responding to an extreme view as well, that the inquisition was the summum of evil):
> "The Spanish Inquisition played a part in prosecuting the phenomenon, but its role was surprisingly enlightened, for it insisted that ‘witchcraft’ was imaginary and therefore not a criminal offence. Whereas in most other countries witches were executed, the Spanish clergy (like those of Italy) refused to treat their offence as heresy, and clear directives from the Inquisition in 1526 and in 1610 made sure that the burning of witches was virtually unknown. However, the secular authorities in Spain continued to execute witches (by hanging), and the number of their victims may have been substantial" Golden Age Spain, Kamen | [
"The Spanish also brought with them the Inquisition as a social and political tool. Public hangings and even burnings, not unusual in Europe at the time, were also used in New Spain, especially in Mexico City, as demonstrations of the joint power of the Church and the State over individual actions and social status... |
tone deafness: what is it exactly and how in the world can someone not hear how off-key they are? | It's when someone can't tell the difference between different pitches (notes) of sound correctly.
There seems to be a part of the brain (the superior [arcuate fasciculus](_URL_0_)) which is broken or missing in tone deaf people. So in a way, asking how certain people can't hear how off-key they are is like asking why blind people can't see: the required part is broken or missing. | [
"Tone-deaf people seem to be disabled only when it comes to music as they can fully interpret the prosody or intonation of human speech. Tone deafness has a strong negative correlation with belonging to societies with tonal languages. This could be evidence that the ability to reproduce and distinguish between note... |
Why didn't the Nazis use hollow point ammunition? | Germany abided the laws of war for the most part. There was a big difference between the Western and the Eastern front obviously.
Like you pointed out this ammunition was banned since the Hague Convention and using this ammuntion would just make the enemy do the same and the advantages would negate each other and it would just result in more suffering.
Nobody follows the laws of war because its the moral thing do to you just do it so your enemy does the same. For a country to break these rules there have to be some conditions. The advantages gained should outweight the disadvantages and you should be powerful enough that it doesn't matter what the rest of the signatories thinks.
During the Battle of the Bulge the Wehrmacht was using vehicles and soldiers without them being properly marked as Wehrmacht going so far to repaint/rework Panthers as M10s. Why would they do that when it is against the laws? Because they were desperate and the Western Allies reaction would be irrelevant. What are they gonna do? Do the same? Doesn't matter they are winning anyways.
> On a broader note why are hollow points against the rules of war?
The point of these rules is to minimize the suffering. Dum dum used by both sides would hardly change anything besides more suffering. The casualty ratios would be the same the victor would be the same. There is literally no point that these bullets should be used in war.
Like pointed out before nobody follows these rules out of kindness. Correct treatment of POWs et cetera benefits everybody ( for the most part ). If you obviously plan to exterminate your enemy then these rules are forgotten really fast as we have seen on the Eastern Front where the Wehrmacht straight up killed POWs or sometimes just didn't take any in the first place. The Wehrmacht also used explosive bullets against the Red Army which are prohibited same like dum dum. Soldiers were prohibited to take these bullets with them to the Western Front.
An example which shows the nature of these rules are the British commando raids. Hitler threatend to execute captured commandos the British replied by stating they would do the same with German POWs. At the end of the day nobody killed any POWs. Laws of war in a nutshell.
It should be noted that Germany was the first to oppose the usage of these type of ammunitions.
Edit: Irronically only ground troops were prohibited to use these types of ammunition. Aircraft often used explosive bullets for example and they also attacked ground forces. | [
"Throughout World War II, the U.S bombings gradually degraded the Japanese munition manufacturing base. Manufacturers were soon forced to find new, inexpensive and creative ways to produce grenades. Contrary to the Russians or Germans, the heavy armor threat was not very present, thus explaining the late developmen... |
Why are there drug effects in nature? | Some of the chemicals are toxins used by the plant to defend themselves. Those can have hallucigenic effects for a human, but might not for an animal that happens to eat the plant. | [
"The effects of a drug are a result of their binding selectivity with macromolecule properties of an organism, or the affinity with which different ligands bind to a substrate. More specifically, the specificity and selectivity of a ligand to its respective receptor provides researchers the opportunity to isolate a... |
To what extent does our knowledge of the electrochemistry of our brain support or contradict the idea of free will? | This is both a scientific and philosophical problem, and we'll need a better understanding of both the question (the language and the meanings of words used to pose it), as well as neuroscience, in order to answer it.
To begin with, you have to state your question much more precisely. "Free will" has too many meanings. Free of what, exactly? Free of knowledge about outcome? Free of natural physical laws? Free of your prior convictions and behaviors? All of these things (and many more) matter, because the answer changes depending on what is being asked.
Obviously, we cannot make a choice that doesn't occur to us at the time of the choice was made. Things that occur to us depend upon our prior knowledge and experience, they don't magically appear out of nothing. So "free will" isn't free in some absolute sense, it depends on your context, which includes prior knowledge and experiences. There are many other such constraints on "free will", even in the philosophical sense. This is why "free will" is really not a great term to use. If you expect useful answers, you must narrow it down and state the question more precisely.
In a wider sense, you could reduce it down to physical determinism. You could ask whether those principles apply, and if they do, how? This does **NOT** equate to "free will" in a philosophical sense, because there are many connotations of "free will" that are perfectly consistent with physical determinism.
The only way to avoid physical determinism in the usual sense is through phenomena that happen at a quantum level. There is no evidence that any such phenomena happen in the brain in a way that affects what we call "free will". However, there are plenty of theories, for example:
* Hameroff, S. R. (2007). The brain is both neurocomputer and quantum computer. Cognitive science, 31(6), 1035-45. doi:10.1080/03640210701704004
* Georgiev, D. (2009). Remarks on the number of tubulin dimers per neuron and implications for Hameroff-Penrose Orch OR. Nature Precedings, 13-15. Nature Publishing Group.
* Lewis, E. R., & MacGregor, R. J. (2006). ON INDETERMINISM, CHAOS, AND SMALL NUMBER PARTICLE SYSTEMS IN THE BRAIN. Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, 5(2), 223-247.
These are not mainstream theories - they are like the stuff put out by many theoretical physicists - stuff that kinda sorta fits into mainstream science but doesn't have much (or any) experimental support.
If you could show quantum indeterminism in the brain, **and** provide some plausible biological mechanism how this might work out in making choices, then it could address questions about the determinism of free will. However, none of this has been done yet.
Moving away from the quantum stuff, there is the interesting question of the **perception of free will**, which is quite separate from the question of whether free will exists. In our own minds, we often feel that our decisions are free. I can get up and go brew a cup of coffee right now, or I may decide not to. I feel that this choice is up to me, and I could freely choose either. This is the **perception** of free will, and this is a question not just of biology, but psychology as well.
There is some work by neuroscientists that addresses questions of this sort, for example:
* Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of personality and social psychology, 100(3), 407-25. doi:10.1037/a0021524
* Eagleman, D. M., & Holcombe, A. O. (2002). Causality and the perception of time. Trends in cognitive sciences, 6(8), 323-325.
* Haggard, P., Clark, S., & Kalogeras, J. (2002). Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nature neuroscience, 5(4), 382-5. doi:10.1038/nn827
* Libet, B. (1999). How does conscious experience arise? The neural time factor. Brain research bulletin, 50(5-6), 339-40.
* Libet, B. (2003). Can Conscious Experience Affect Brain Activity? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10(12), 24–28. Imprint Academic.
I would recommend reading some of those papers, specially the seminal work by Libet, which is quoted extensively and further developed by the others. In brief, they argue that we may form decisions, make choices *before* we are aware of having made the choice. So "free will" may in fact not be the act of freely choosing whether or not to perform an action, but rather a post-processing of a choice already made, which may include modifying or refining it, or even **not** acting upon it by making **another** "free will" choice that impedes or negates the first.
The situation is pretty complex. I don't think we are even at the point of knowing which is the right question to ask. It may be that "free will" works in some way that isn't like what people intuitively understand by the term. | [
"Neuroscientists such as Bjoern Brembs and Christof Koch believe thermodynamically stochastic processes in the brain are the basis of free will, and that even very simple organisms such as flies have a form of free will. Similar ideas are put forward by some philosophers such as Robert Kane.\n",
"The neuroscience... |
What are the advantages of hair over feathers and scales? | Better insulation and less weight and air resistance. If you don't want to fly and have to keep your core temperature above the temperature of the environment, hair turned out to be your best choice ;) | [
"There's got to be a series of advantages all the way in the feather. If you can't think of one, then that's your problem not natural selection's problem... It's perfectly possible feathers began as fluffy extensions of reptilian scales to act as insulators... The earliest feathers might have been a different appro... |
Is there a 200 year time discrepancy during the middle ages? | No. This is a ridiculous theory which, like the Phantom Time Hypothesis, would imply that no other place, like, say, China, in the world was capable of telling or keeping time. I am frankly shocked and appalled that anyone put in front of a class would spout such nonsense. | [
"This classification was not new, except for setting the Middle Ages between 476 and 1492, which he as well as his colleague and rival in Göttingen Johann Christoph Gatterer suggested roughly at the same time. These time borders for the Middle Ages are still accepted today.\n",
"One Biblical periodization scheme ... |
what keeps the oceans from flooding the earth? | Gravity. The gravity of the Earth pulls the oceans (and all liquids) to the lowest point they can go. That's why rivers flow downhill from mountains into the ocean.
The same force that keeps water inside your glass keeps the water of the oceans in the ocean. | [
"Another result of the warming oceans are stronger hurricanes, which will wreak more havoc on land, and in the oceans, and create more opportunities for vectors to breed and infectious diseases to flourish. Extreme weather also means stronger winds. These winds can carry vectors tens of thousands of kilometers, res... |
why are smartphone companies (especially apple) adding like 3 didfrent cameras on thier phone. is this really necesary, and does this increase the price by a lot? because if it does i dont understand why its not better to buy a camera then add three cameras to a phone | There is probably a demand from people who use their phone as everything and do not have a separate camera. Demand could also come from people using services like iCloud to back up their photos, and companies like Apple can see how much their camera is being used).
Of course cost will increase, but we won't know the exact price of sensors and lenses until people break down the new iPhones to find out the real cost.
I very much prefer using my DSLR to take photos, for RAW photos of acceptable resolution, so phone cameras don't mean much to me. I pretty much only use phone cameras to scan documents. | [
"Many reviewers have criticized the device due to its outdated processor which results in a sluggish performance in some heavy apps. On the other hand, they praise the 3.15 MP rear camera of the device which they have found to be capable of taking clear pictures with adequate picture quality for its price range. Ov... |
Do humans have any natural instincts? If so, what are they? | We have a bunch of natural instincts.
You ever take a swig of sour milk and retch?
You ever snap awake when water hits your face?
These are instincts bred into us for our survival.
Rotten food could kill you, get it out of your mouth!
Water could drown you! Get up get up get up!
Anytime you feel an unexplained revulsion or terror, think about that, these represented real serious dangers to our ancestors.
If you saw movement in the darkness and froze still, you stood a better chance of survival. If it was a tiger, maybe he misses you, if it was nothing then nothing happens. But if it was a tiger and you ignored it and carried on, you died.
We are shot through with these reactions; they are our instincts and they are valuable and were even more so in the past. | [
"Instinct is often misinterpreted as intuition and its reliability considered to be dependent on past knowledge and occurrences in a specific area. For example, someone who has had more experiences with children will tend to have a better instinct about what they should do in certain situations with them. This is n... |
how does "declaring war" on a country work? and how does a country know who is attacking them? couldn't the us go bomb a country and say another country did it? | Yes, a country's leader could go attack another country and blame someone else. However, the complexities in chain of command and the number of people that would be required to know are so high that people would find out eventually. Even Russia, which Putin keeps on lockdown with state-controlled news and the like, couldn't keep their invasion of Ukraine a secret indefinitely. With a free press and a division of power like in the US, it wouldn't take long at all for someone to start putting the pieces together.
At the very least, if the President did start to wage some sort of "secret war" without Congressional consent, eventually things like soldiers and ammunition and fuel would start going absent. When it came time for Congress to pay the bills, they'd find out and be pretty upset because it's exclusively their power to be able to formally declare war.
World War 1 was officially declared by the German diplomat to the Russian prince, to give an example. Nowadays it's difficult to say how a country like the US would declare war against an equivalent power, because would you really want to give a nuclear power forewarning that you're about to attack? | [
"The United States has formally declared war against foreign nations five separate times, each upon prior request by the President of the United States. Four of those five declarations came after hostilities had begun. James Madison reported that in the Federal Convention of 1787, the phrase \"make war\" was change... |
In WW2, Why did Germany open a second front with the USSR? Why wouldn't they wait until defeating Britain? | Hitler cancelled Operation Sealion (the invasion of Britain) in 1940 because after the loss of the Battle of Britain he could never have had the air or naval superiority required to launch a successful invasion. On the other hand, Britain posed little threat to Hitler once he was master of the continent - the RAF and Royal Navy were an annoyance to the Nazi materiel massed in Northern France but Britain was in no position to launch an invasion.
The 'Western' front, then, had ground to a halt and was unlikely to change at any point soon. Britain was not a serious threat to Occupied Europe and vice versa.
This allowed Hitler the chance to look east, and the chance to use the Blitzkrieg techniques that had been so successful in overrunning Europe. He and his staff knew that war in Russia was inevitable. Rather than giving the USSR further time to prepare for war the Nazi hierarchy formulated a plan to strike an enormous and sudden blow - the largest invasion in the history of warfare - on the USSR to stun them into submission. About the USSR Hitler believed 'We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down' - he did not share the same confidence about Britain. With the USSR defeated swiftly and decisively Hitler would be the uncontested dictator of Europe, his flanks secured, which would then allow him to turn his attention to Britain. Had Barbarossa been successful it's likely a renewed invasion of Britain would have been. | [
"During the war, both sides disagreed on military strategy, especially the question of the opening of a second front against Germany in Western Europe. As early as July 1941, Stalin asked Britain to invade northern France, but Britain was in no position to carry out such a request. Stalin had also requested that th... |
What was W. Europe and Britain like before the Romans arrived? Who lived there and how did it change as a result? | Well, in France, you had the Gauls, who were divided in multiple tribes, like the Arverni, the Aedui and the Belgii who were quite advanced. These tribes were Celtic. Spain had been taken over by Carthage, partially and the rest of it was inhabited by Spanish tribes. Those tribes were Spanish, but there were a few Celtiberian tribes, so mixed. The Netherlands was inhabited by the Frisians and the Batavi, the latter of which became famous for their service in the Roman military. The Frisians and Batavi were Germanic. Britain was inhabited by Celtic tribes as well. Picts in Scotland and Britons in England. I don't know what tribes they had, I only know about the Iceni. Hope that answers a part of your question. | [
"In Britain, the situation was somewhat different, as Rome had retreated from the island by about 400 AD, and the native inhabitants who remained were, for a time, left relatively free of foreign influence. When, in 597 AD, strong Roman influence again reached the island of Britain (by now in the hands of the Anglo... |
Did Hitler genuinely hold Christian beliefs or were his Christian beliefs solely a political move? | More that can be said, but check out the [Hitler section of the FAQ for some related content.](_URL_0_) | [
"In 2003, two challenges appeared to this consensus view. One was from Richard Steigmann-Gall as part of his wider thesis that \"leading Nazis in fact considered themselves Christian\" or at least understood their movement \"within a Christian frame of reference\". He argues that several passages in the \"Table Tal... |
Were Ethiopia's rulers Jewish before converting to Christianity? And if not, was there a large Jewish Ethiopian population that in anyway predisposed Ethiopia into becoming Christian? | Sorta. On the first bit, there was a [Jewish kingdom in the region](_URL_0_), but I wouldn't call them the leaders of Ethiopia. However, there was a large Jewish population in Ethiopia. They moved to Israel en masse in the early 1990s, but there was a significant population. And this population seems to have been larger historically--there was much coercive conversion to Christianity from Judaism earlier on. The relationship of Christianity in Ethiopia with Ethiopian Judaism is evident in works like their respective biblical canons--both Jews and Christians in Ethiopia have bibles written in Ge'ez, which contains books not considered canonical in either Christianity or Judaism elsewhere. | [
"For years, Ethiopian Jews were unable to own land and were often persecuted by the Christian majority of Ethiopia. Ethiopian Jews were afraid to touch non-Jews because they believed non-Jews were not pure, which also ostracized them from their Christian neighbors. For this reason, many Ethiopian Jews converted to ... |
what's wrong with transfats? | They increase your chance of heart disease by a *lot*; if just 2% of your calories come from trans fats, your chance of heart disease doubles. There's also no good reason why they can't be replaced with "normal" fats, so many people have chosen to do so. | [
"TransJustice is an advocacy organization created by and for trans and gender non-conforming people of color. The group focuses on trans-related policies in jobs, housing and health care, including job training programs, resisting transphobic violence, HIV services and trans-sensitive medical services.\n",
"Trans... |
if an adult marries a minor aged, for arguments sake, 13 in a third world country, and moved to a country where the legal age of consent and marriage is higher, what happens? | Most likely the marriage would not be considered valid.
And even if it was considered valid, unless there's a law stating that the age of consent does not apply to married couples, it would still be illegal for the couple to have sex. | [
"In England and Wales the general age at which a person may marry is 18, but 16- or 17-year-olds may get married with their parents' or guardians' consent. If they are unable to obtain this, they can gain consent from the courts, which may be granted by the Magistrates' Courts, or the County or High Court family di... |
What maintains the amount of blood in your body? | [Erythropoiesis](_URL_0_) is the process by which your body regulates red blood cell production.
If you are low on oxygen in your blood, your kidneys make more erythropoietin. This is the on switch to produce more red blood cells.
There's a physical limit on how much you can make since you need to replace all the red blood cells every 100-120 days as they die off. At maximum production, you could theoretically keep close to double the normal amount of red blood cells if your body constantly thought it was low on oxygen. This can happen to smokers or patients with COPD, although few people have that level of constant stimuli or the nutrient intake to keep production that high. | [
"Blood accounts for 7% of the human body weight, with an average density around 1060 kg/m, very close to pure water's density of 1000 kg/m. The average adult has a blood volume of roughly , which is composed of plasma and several kinds of cells. These blood cells (which are also called corpuscles or \"formed elemen... |
Why in the 19th,20th century or even today autocratic states always have military parade with all the stuffs(Tanks, missiles, choregraphic move) while in the western world its fairly rare and less impressive? | For the United States, I can shed some light. The United States Army and other Armed Forces of the U.S. are, at a federal level, heavily restricted from operating as a cohesive force for any purpose (including parades) domestically.
One thing that's important to understand is how the U.S. Army is organized. While there is a Regular Army and an Army Reserve that are controlled, mostly, at a central, federal level. There is also a large National Guard that is, at least theoretically, the responsibility of each state to raise, maintain, and control, and which is the primary go-to for domestic army needs, *not* the Federal Army forces.
Indeed, the Founders of the U.S. were extremely wary, for obvious reasons, of standing armies of any kind, and especially of the chief executive (in this case, the President of the U.S.) using those armies on U.S. soil for improper purposes under the guise of protecting the people. As such, soon after the U.S. Constitution was passed, the Congress passed the [Insurrection Act of 1807](_URL_2_), which makes it very difficult for the President to use the army domestically, even in the event of an insurrection, rebellion, or foreign invasion, without going through a series of Congressional checks. Likewise, the [Posse Comitatus Act](_URL_1_), of 1878 and 1981, heavily limits the ability of the federal Armed Forces to be allowed to enforce state laws.
Together, along with other supporting laws, it is very, very difficult to allow the Army to operate in any capacity at all in a domestic way in the U.S. Parades that involve large gatherings of troops and marches would not necessarily be prohibited by any of this, but the troops that would be organized in this way would likely need to come from the various states' individual National Guard units, not the overall Federal Army. States are unlikely to want to send large numbers of their personnel to a single point in the country for a show of force, and the nature of these laws and the philosophy behind them should show that Americans, in general, are pretty put off and suspicious of parades of this nature, to start with.
That said, such gatherings were not unheard of in the old days. During the Civil War, when States were truly responsible for gathering their own Army units and there was no separate Federal force to speak of, there were parades and shows of force. [The Army of the Potomac](_URL_0_) paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue, as seen in that photo, during the [Grand Review of the Armies](_URL_3_) following the end of the war in 1865. In a funny story, during this parade, George Armstrong Custer, in typical fashion, actually paraded twice, just so he could soak up double the adulation from the adoring masses. That egoism would later serve him poorly.
At any rate, I've sort of rambled around, but the short answer to your question, at least with regard to the U.S. is: Americans are suspicious of domestic armies, and put lots of laws to keep them out of domestic operations in place. That, along with the state-focused organization of the modern U.S. Army makes parades hard. However, they aren't unheard of in the past, even here. | [
"Until 1875 the army was lined across the route of the royal procession from the palace to the church and back. In 1875 for the first time the army paraded in front of the palace, a practice starting from the middle of the century in public holidays in France and the German states. The next year, even though there ... |
How do stimulants keep you awake? | Sleep is pretty complicated, and is regulated by a lot of different neurotransmitters/neuropeptides. Most people are familiar with caffeine, which blocks your ability to feel increasing levels of adenosine, which accumulate over time to make you tired.
Most classical stimulants (i.e. the amphetamines) work by interfering with certain transporter proteins that normally bring the neurotransmitters back into the neuron after they are released. Therefore you have highly increased levels of dopamine (more pleasure-centric) and also norepinephrine. Think of norepinephrine as the flight-or-fight neurotransmitter, and it activates numerous circuits that are focused on being alert. One of the main things it does is inhibit the [VLPO neurons](_URL_0_), which are sleep-promoting. | [
"There are several stimulants approved by the FDA for treatment of excessive sleepiness due to narcolepsy. These include methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin) and dextroamphetamine, among others. Selegiline may also be useful, as it is \"primarily a metabolic precursor of amphetamine and exerts most of its therapeutic ef... |
What sort of behavior has been observed in cloned animals? Do their behaviors and temperaments stay the same? | There actually have been studies on the behavior of cloned animals, particularly livestock. According to studies, the behavior of both pigs ([link](_URL_3_)) and dairy cattle ([link](_URL_1_)) and ([link](_URL_2_)) is very similar to similar animals.
One interesting note from the cattle studies is that the cloned cattle preferred each other's company, and were more friendly towards their clones than they were to their non-clone siblings. Cattle in general have been shown to "recognize" related cattle before, so this is not entirely surprising.
A couple things to think about with these studies: they are working with small group sizes, because cloning is still relatively new, and behavior is tricky to assess in an objective and repeatable manner. Also - each species seems to need slightly different techniques for successful cloning. So we would certainly need more studies, and it's possible that as we continue to clone more animals
Finally, this commentary ([link](_URL_0_)) from a head researcher in Norway indicates that cloning does not produce as much of a mirror match as we might have originally thought it would. | [
"Behaviour mutations have been studied in a variety of animals, but most commonly in \"Drosophila melanogaster\" due to being able to produce large numbers with short generation time as well as a rich diversity of behaviours. Many tests have been used in drosophila by specifying behavioural mutations to further und... |
What did language education look like in Mesopotamia? | The genesis of a language, assuming its organic nature, is something that is still hotly debated among evolutionary biologists, cognitive psychologists, and linguists alike. Conlangs (constructed languages made by individuals or groups) did not really come about until much later in history (medieval times really, like Enochian). I have seen no compelling evidence that Sumerian or any of the other ancient mesopotamian languages were conlangs, so it is unlikely that a single individual "came up" with a language here and disseminated it throughout society. Beyond this, I cannot comment on the linguistic evolution of Sumerian, Akkadian, or Aramaic.
I can, however, comment on the way that writing was taught in the Fertile Crescent. The Sumerians had initially developed writing in the city-state of Uruk, where cuneiform evolved past its proto-cuneiform stage. We know that Uruk is the birthplace of human writing because the oldest cuneiform documents can be found there, and the very Sumerian symbol for "city" was the same as that used for "Uruk" (compare other city-states whose names are differentiated). The ancient Sumerians had a system of schools called *edubba* designed to train scribes (*dubsar*). Writing in Sumeria developed not for religious purposes (at least initially, as it would certainly attain a religious element later on), but rather for accounting purposes; early transactions had merchants send clay envelopes filled with tokens alongside their merchandise to their customers. The tokens would correspond to the type and quantity of goods to ensure that the correct goods were traded, and pictographs detailing the contents of the envelope were stamped on the outside to ensure that the customer knew if goods and their tokens were stolen. Eventually, they did away with the tokens altogether and sent along clay tablets with pictographs instead. The pictographs became more abstract as time went on, resulting in wedge-writing we know today as cuneiform.
Scribal *edubba* changed in format over time, and by the Third Dynasty of Ur, schooling was done in a master scribe's home, where his students (*dumu edubba*, "children of the school") were instructed in a wide range of topics, including arithmetic, history, religion, and wisdom literature (proverbs, catchy sayings). There was even a recess period and teacher's aides (*shesh'gal*) to watch over students during breaks.
Regarding language, the Ancient Sumerians spoke Sumerian, a language isolate not definitively know to be related to any other language. Their successors, the Akkadians, spoke Akkadian, a Semitic language related to Aramaic, Hebrew, and Arabic. When Sargon of Akkad forged one of the first hegemonic powers of the Middle East, his people adopted the Sumerian cuneiform to write their own records. This led to some difficulties, as cuneiform was tailored to the structure of the Sumerian language, not Akkadian, so various methods had to be employed to allow Akkadian to be represented well (such as the use of rebus, that is, using homophones, i.e. Eye-sea-ewe standing for "I see you"). The Akkadians would actually retain the use of the Sumerian language for religious and scientific purposes, much as how Learned Latin was used in Europe or Sanskrit in India, Classical Chinese in China, etc. It was a sign of prestige (and pretention) for an Akkadian scribe to be able to write and speak in Sumerian, and as such Sumerian was often taught in their scribal schools.
If you'd like to know more, [here's](_URL_0_) a writeup I did a while ago addressing the structure of the Sumerian education system. | [
"Assyrian culture and literature came from Babylonia, but even here there was a difference between the two countries. There was little in Assyrian literature that was original, and education, general in Babylonia, was mostly restricted to a single class in the northern kingdom. In Babylonia, it was of very old stan... |
psychologically, why does it seem more common that we highlight the negative aspects in our lives, rather than the positives? | It's called memory polarization- you'll find as time goes on we don't necessarily just remember the bad, it can go either way. Ex: one old man "when I was your age I had to walk 5 miles uphill both ways in the snow just to get to school" (this is a negative polarization/life was worse) but another old man might say "when I was a kid we played outside all day and never had issues with violence and gangs" (positive polarization/life was better then). As time goes on and memories fade you will categorize a memory as either positive or negative to simplify it | [
"In psychology there is a law of hedonic asymmetry that says evaluations of good and bad are important but not the same; negative experiences tend to dominate. In other words, people tend to dwell on the negative more than the positive. Responses to negative situations are automatic and require more attention to pr... |
why do the people who impact/benefit society the most (teachers, non-doctor healthcare providers, relief aid organizations, etc.) get paid so little in comparison to those who benefit society relatively less (pro athletes, artists, etc.)? | People like being entertained, so much so that they're willing to pay lots of money in tickets and merchandise. That money has to go somewhere. Because these people develop a cult of personality and they actually DO impact society significantly through culture, it draws people. Because they can draw people to spend money, others are willing to pay them lots of money.
If you get 50,000 people willing to pay $50 for a ticket to a concert or sporting event, you just took in 2.5 million in revenue. That money has to go somewhere.
Keep in mind as well there are tons of athletes, actors and artists that AREN'T getting paid millions. Some of them are easily in the 20-50k range a year. It's only the very top that gets paid that amount of money. For example, in the US there is an American Football league (Arena football league) where most players earn between 40-60k. | [
"Non-profit health care is available to help the poorest and most underserved people. Organizations currently active in the region include the Red Cross, World Vision, and Medecins Sans Frontieres. These non-profit organizations aim to develop the quantity of life of marginalized and disadvantaged individuals.\n",
... |
how do magnets form, and why/ how do they do what they do? | All matter is made out of atoms. An atom can be thought of as a small nucleus of material around which orbit even smaller particles of matter called electrons. The electrons have an electrical charge, so when they orbit they form small loops of electrical current around each nucleus. Magnetic fields are formed by electricity. In most materials the little magnets formed by each atom are all pointing in different directions, and so they cancel each other out. In some materials such as lodestone, an iron ore, the Earth's magnetic field lined up all the atom-magnets and left the whole stone one large magnet.
People have used naturally occurring magnets for thousands of years. Once people found that other materials could also be made into magnets, they started producing stronger magnets by a variety of different processes. Certain metals can be made into magnets by exposing them to magnetic fields. Although just placing the metal in a magnetic field can work, making it vibrate increases the effect. Stroking the metal with the magnet also increases the effect. Heating the metal up while it is in the field and hammering it while it cools increases the effect even further. Steel and iron make good magnets. So does an alloy of aluminum, nickel, and cobalt called alnico. | [
"A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, and attracts or repels other magnets. \n",
"The term \"magnet\" is typically reserved ... |
if nasa isn't allowed to go near water, why are they gearing up to explore europa's ocean? | It isn't outlawed entirely, persay. NASA can go explore water if it designs the mission to focus entirely on sterilization of the probe. If they can ensure 100% disinfection, they can do it.
Curiosity was never equipped with the right tools to fully disinfect itself in this way. | [
"After the fly-by of Saturn, the camera platform of \"Voyager 2\" locked up briefly, putting plans to officially extend the mission to Uranus and Neptune in jeopardy. The mission's engineers were able to fix the problem (caused by an overuse that temporarily depleted its lubricant), and the \"Voyager 2\" probe was ... |
What is happening in the sky tonight | Still daylight where I'm at but I think you're describing a lunar halo. Google it, it's pretty interesting. | [
"Sky News Tonight is a weeknight news programme broadcast on Sky News from 7:00pm. It is presented by Dermot Murnaghan. First aired on 1 September 2014, it is Sky's flagship newscast, featuring special reports, in-depth analysis and interviews.\n",
"Sky World News Tonight (also known on air as World News Tonight)... |
now that weed is legal in some states, how will police be able to determine what levels of thc warrant a dui? | That's a big open question right now. We don't currently have a simple, cost-effective test that accurately determines how intoxicated a person is that's equivalent to an alcohol breathalyzer. For now, they're just playing it by ear & the existing legal standards all suck. | [
"Part V on \"driving under the influence of marijuana\" sets a per se DUI limit of \"delta-9\" THC levels at greater than or equal to 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood (5 ng/mL). Some medical cannabis advocates are concerned that this will lead to DUI convictions for medicinal cannabis users, who are driving with... |
Are human sicknesses able to cause sickness in other animals, such as cats and dogs? | Some do. An illness that is transmitted from an animal to humans or vice versa is a zoonosis. Zoonoses do not have to cause the same symptoms in both parties to qualify as such, *many* zoonoses are asymptomatic in the animal carrier or vector. There are far too many to list them all, but some good examples might be lyme disease, which is spread by ticks, tularemia which is found in rabbits, and toxoplamosis from cats. These are pretty severe conditions, as a general rule you cannot give your precious pet a simple cold or flu nor could you get one from him.
That said, Some of our really common bacterial foes cause the same problems in our domesticated pets- dogs and cats can get their wounds infected with *Staphylococcus aureus* andurinary tract infections from *E. coli*, just as we do for example. These aren't zoonoses, just examples of organisms adapted to live in many different hosts. Actually very few pathogens can only survive in humans, mostly viruses.
An interesting case is that of influenza. You may have seen influenza strains referred to a swine flu, bird flu, etc. New strains of the flu emerge in animals and then make the jump to humans thanks to mutations which give them the ability to survive and thrive within us. Interestingly, pet ferrets can get the flu, with similar symptoms, from contact with their sick owners. That's the only example I can think of (undoubtably there are others) of humans and an animal being able to infect each other and having the same symptoms. I'd love to know of other examples. | [
"Some diseases and other health problems are common to both humans and dogs; others are unique to dogs and other animals. Dogs are susceptible to various diseases; similarly to humans, they can have diabetes, epilepsy, cancer, or arthritis.\n",
"BULLET::::- Studies on models of naturally occurring disease and con... |
Does magnetization of a piece of metal change its mechanical properties? | A little, but it is almost irrelevant because deforming the metal is going to rapidly demagnetize the metal. This is essentially due to entropy, at room temperature the magnetised state is either unstable and slowly decaying back to the demagnetised state or metastable. Either way, mechanical energy of even elastic deformations is usually enough to greatly increase the demagnetization rate. Sorry if that doesn't answer your question. | [
"Ferromagnetic materials (like iron) are composed of microscopic regions called magnetic domains, that act like tiny permanent magnets that can change their direction of magnetization. Before an external magnetic field is applied to the material, the domains' magnetic fields are oriented in random directions, effec... |
why do minivans have pop-out third row windows? | I'd imagine it's due to some combination of cost reduction (car companies are *incredibly* stingy lol), improving airflow without causing the annoying buffeting effect inside the vehicle, and the simple fact that the rear wheels of a minivan are right under the third row windows, so those windows couldn't roll down all the way anyway. | [
"The 4th generation LFS features a restyled rear end and interior. This model features electric cooling fans, as opposed to hydraulic ones. An option featuring no rear window was made available. Also, as of 2018, a new driver's side window, without the additional side pillar was added as an option. \n",
"Window f... |
why do hand warmers expire? | From what I've read, hand warmers work via a chemical reaction, caused by the exposure to air. So as long as they are exposed to air, they will give heat. At a certain moment, there is nothing left to react with air.
While they are wrapped in plastic, there is less exposure to air. However, plastic wrapping isn't airtight, so new air will come in and start the reaction.
So, that is what expiry is about: So warn you that after so many months the amount of air leaking in the bag will have exhausted the reaction.
| [
"Hand warmers are small (mostly disposable) packets which are held in the hand and produce heat on demand to warm cold hands. They are commonly used in outdoor activities. Other types of warmers are available to provide soothing heat for muscular or joint aches.\n",
"It was also believed that cooling one's hands ... |
Why are there so few remains of german culture and language in today's USA when german used to be the largest group in terms of ethnic heritage | (a re-statement of my earlier points without the unnecessary soapboxing--my apologies to the AskHistorians mods.)
I'm not an Americanist, so this will remain a 'holding' point until the Americanists arrive, but:
There were intensive efforts to eradicate German language and/or culture during and immediately after the First World War.
In May of 1918, for instance, the Governor of Iowa issued the 'Babel' Proclamation, stating that "only English is legal in public or private schools, in public conversations, on trains, over the telephone, at all meetings, and in all religious services." Similarly, in June of 1918, South Dakota made it illegal to 'use' (speak) German at any public gathering.
Nebraska removed German-language books from schools in 1918, and forced the closure of German-language newspapers. They even made it illegal to teach in any foreign language.
But during the war, the informal attacks on German were much more threatening: American self-styled patriots even went on Dachshund killing-sprees, if you can believe it. German town and street-names were re-named. (Berlin, Ohio changed its name to Fort Loramie, Ohio.) German families changed their name, German breweries changed their brand-name, etc.
Some words of German origin were changed, at least temporarily. (Sauerkraut came to be called "liberty cabbage"; hamburgers became "liberty sandwiches"; and so forth).
Anti-German legislation only intensified after war's end, curiously. Indiana, for instance, made it illegal to teach the German language in Indiana in 1919. Ultimately, anti-German-speaking laws were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1923. (Meyer v. Nebraska; Oliver Wendell Holmes dissented.)
There's been a ton written on this (most of which I've not read myself, sorry!): but one book that leaps to mind is Christopher Capozzola's Uncle Sam Wants You; he talks about anti-German activities for 10 pages or so. | [
"According to the 2000 U.S. Census, people of German ancestry made up the largest single ethnic group in the United States, but German language ranked fifth. Italian, Polish, and French are still widely spoken among populations descending from immigrants from those countries in the early 20th century, but the use o... |
Before the advent of photographs and film, who were the great female sex symbols and how did people find out about them? | Cleopatra was definitely a sex symbol going as far back as BCE times. In fact, I submit that she intersects exactly with the OP's example of Rita Hayworth as her myth progresses (being depicted by Vivien Leigh in 1945's 'Caesar and Cleopatra' after Hayworth rejected the role)
Early accounts of Cleopatra set her up to be remembered. The story of her having her servant Apollodoros wrap her up in a carpet and unroll her for Caesar is referenced by Plutarch:
> "The only friend Cleopatra took with her was Apollodorus of Sicily. She sailed in a small dinghy to the royal palace, where she landed at dusk, and since she was bound to be spotted otherwise, she got inside one of those bags that are used for holding bedclothes and stretched herself out to her full length, while Apollodorus tied a strap around the bag and carried her inside to Caesar."
-Plutarch. Roman Lives. p. 341
Plutarch also said that she "had a great personality" (as opposed to SHE WAS SMOKIN' HOT)
> “For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased…”
More recent historians use more brevity:
> "Her landing is immortalized by the story, which may well be true, that a Sicilian merchant Apollodorus smuggled her past the coastguards in a carpet or a roll of bedding."
-Grant, Michael. Cleopatra. p. 63
As to what she "actually" looked like... it is hard to say:
* [An early sculptural depiction of Cleopatra in the Louvre in France](_URL_12_)
* [Some other busts](_URL_26_) These were created during the Roman "realistic" period, but it is difficult to tell how accurate these were.
* [Here is a contemporary coin](_URL_19_) [The coins of the time](_URL_3_) seem to emphasize her "hook" nose.
* [51-30 bce sculpture](_URL_16_)
* [3rd century bas relief](_URL_11_)
* [A modern aggregate rendition](_URL_24_) of what Cleopatra might have looked like [from many sources](_URL_22_).
As time goes on, Cleopatra is represented as being more and more "beautiful" as opposed to "realistic". Her image over the years is actually useful for understanding what people thought of as "beautiful" at the time. Cleopatra, being a classical figure, was a great outlet for an artist to paint a pretty woman without seeming to be lewd or base. Her death seems to be an especially helpful vehicle in this regard.
* [S. Netherlands \[Bruges\], The Death of Anthony with Sword and Cleopatra with Asps, 1470-1483](_URL_20_) (note the anachronistically comical presence of the very un-Egyptian hennin and the use of asps to preserve modesty.)
* [Michelangelo Bunnaroti, 1533](_URL_10_) ("asp as pastie" again)
* [Tiepolo's "The Banquet of Cleopatra", 1745](_URL_27_)
* [Cabanel, 1823: Cleopatra testing poisons on the condemned](_URL_28_)
* [A. Rixens, 'The Death of Cleopatra', 1874](_URL_15_)
* [John Williams, 1888](_URL_13_)
* [Reginald Arthur, 1892](_URL_17_)
Once films and images begin to propogate, the depiction of Cleopatra becomes more homogenized
* [Jane Cowl, 1899](_URL_8_)
* [Theda Bara as Cleopatra, 1917](_URL_7_) [And strikingly](_URL_9_)
* [Claudette Colbert in Cecile B. DeMille's 'Cleopatra', 1934](_URL_9_)
* [Vivien Leigh in 'Caesar and Cleopatra', 1945](_URL_0_)
* [Piper Laurie in General Electric Theater's April 1959 production of 'Caesar and Cleopatra'.](_URL_25_)
*[1962 Fashion Model Cleopatra Costume](_URL_21_)
* [Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, 1963](_URL_2_) [And](_URL_6_)
* ['Cleopatra' Japanese Anime, 1970](_URL_29_) (You know you are a sex symbol when the Japanese start drawing you)
* [Hildegard Niel, 'Anthony and Cleopatra', 1973](_URL_18_)
* [Jane Lapotaire in BBC's 'Anthony and Cleopatra', 1980](_URL_5_) who (appropos of nothing) bears striking resemblance to Game of Throne's [Caetlyn Tully Stark](_URL_1_) (Michelle Fairley). I only put that here because the Lapotaire picture is so small.
* Finally, [Angelina Jolie as Cleopatra \(2013\)](_URL_14_)
With few exceptions (Lapotaire), the modern depictions of Cleopatra tend toward this archetype: Black bangs, silky shift, almond eyes, and an implicitly willing disposition. Almost all recent "sex symbol" models and actresses can be found portraying a sexy Cleopatra-like woman with only a cursory Google image search.
* [Modern Halloween costume for Cleopatra](_URL_4_)
* [Cleopatra ASCII depiction](_URL_23_)
I therefore humbly submit that Cleopatra was one of the first, and certainly the most enduring "sex symbol" memes which Rita Hayworth and others have echoed through the ages. [\(though certainly not *the* first\)](_URL_30_) | [
"During the Second World War, pin-up girl photographs reached a wide audience. Unlike earlier erotic photographs, whose subjects were usually anonymous, a number of well-known film stars posed for pin-up photographs and they were promoted as sex symbols. The emphasis was initially on bare legs, short skirts or swim... |
how are translucent things actually see through? like a translucent frog or fish. | Stating the obvious here, but the tissue they are made of doesn't absorb light in the visible wavelengths. | [
"By combining two types of recessive genes that cause frogs to become translucent, a breed of \"Rana japonica,\" popularly called \"see-through frogs\", were produced by Japanese scientists in 2007 to see the frog's organs, blood cells, and eggs without dissection. The skin is not clear, but translucent. Cancer gro... |
global economics. | > How is it fair that my time is worth more than theirs?
It has nothing to do with it being "fair" and you are thinking about this entirely wrong by involving ethics or morality. How much people's time is worth is almost entirely unrelated to this topic.
The relative value of currency on the open market comes down to supply and demand. More demand increases the price, more supply decreases the price. Why do people need currency in the first place? It is to buy stuff using said currency.
If you are in France and you want to buy something from a company in the United States you need to get your hands on USD. The company pays their employees in USD and so only accepts payment in USD; there are of course currency brokers who can perform the currency exchange for a fee but ultimately it must become the local currency at some point and the exchange rate comes into play.
Now obviously if there is a bunch of stuff people want from one country then the demand for that currency will be high. But there are other factors which impact the value of a currency such as the ability of that currency to be exchanged for other things of value. USD for example is valued not just for things which you can buy within the US, but also other entities will take it because they are assured there will be a demand for it from others in the future. To contrast this imagine the currency of a tiny country with a "flavor of the month" dictator. Chances 50/50 that the government will collapse in 6 months and the currency will become useless, which means its value now will be low regardless of what can be purchased with it.
You can see at this point that the value of a currency is almost completely unrelated to the productivity of the individual worker from that country.
> The bigger picture as I am always dreaming of changing the status quo is what would a global economy look like without slave labor where peoples time was equal? Possible?
Simply put: No.
First it is basically impossible for the currency of two different countries to be worth precisely the same unless one is pegged to the other artificially. The reputation for stability of the countries, what can be purchased within their economies or how accepting the global markets are of the currency, and the volume of money supply are going to vary.
But beyond that it is impossible for people's time to be equally valued even *with the same currency*! An hour of a surgeon's time simply isn't worth the same amount as an hour of a retail stocker's time. They simply don't provide equal amounts of utility. That example should illustrate how your idealistic desire is unrealistic and irrelevant to the realities of economics. | [
"International political economy (IPE), also known as global political economy (GPE), refers to either economics or an interdisciplinary academic discipline that analyzes economics and international relations. When it is used to refer to the latter, it usually focuses on political economy and economics, although it... |
Today is Commonwealth Day. How did the newly independent nations in Africa and the Indian subcontinent view the Commonwealth at its inception? Didn't they see it as the vestiges of colonialism? | India saw heated debate on this topic of 'to be or not to be'. It was so heated that it even created a schism within the leading Indian Freedom Fighters party, the Indian National Congress.
The British Raj had consistently maintained that it (through the British Parliament) reserved the rights to decide when and the extent to which India could have self governance. This was enshrined in the Government of India Act 1919. During this period (till about the mid 20's), the concept of "Purna (Total) Swaraj (Freedom)" was very limited in the Indian freedom movement, and the general push was for 'dominion status'. A fully independent state, but one that recognised the supremacy of the British Monarch.
It was at this stage that many powerful events sort of coalesced together which would about a decade later set the stage for the total unity (for the most part) in the demand for Purna Swaraj.
The Jalianwallah Bagh Massacre revolted Indians, and this act lead to the most powerful Indian leader of his era, Gandhi to declare that while his (and the INC's) goal was "Swaraj" and a political and spiritual freedom from Britain, Britain's behaviour to Indians alone would determine his future course of action. The gauntlet...had been dropped.
In 1921, another Congress leader, Hasrat Mohani for the first time (for the INC) openly called for Purna Swaraj and a complete breaking of ties with Britain.
In 1922, Britain constituted (in my own view, a tasteless, and tactless) a Committee to look into India and suggest reforms. The problem was that, the committee, named the Simon Commission was comprised entirely of white men from Britain. This enraged the Indians, who promptly (the INC that is) set up a Nehru Committee comprised of Indians to propose 'counter reforms'.
This is where the schism starts to form. The Nehru Committee, headed by Motilal Nehru proposed amongst other things that India not push for Purna Swaraj, but for Swaraj, and that it remain a dominion. That is, something similar to Canada or Australia - independent nation, but the Crown is sovereign and the British Parliament would have the ability to intervene in India's constitutional affairs.
This set the cat amongst the pigeons and sparked a massive row within the INC. M Nehru's own son, Jawaharlal Nehru (the first PM of India) and one of the most powerful INC leaders, Subash Chandra Bose, renounced this report and said nothing less than Purna Swaraj would do.
The biggest roadblock to Purna Swaraj though was, Gandhi. He totally and completely dominated the INC, and was a total force to be reckoned with, and he wasn't convinced that Purna Swaraj was an acceptable solution. He wanted India to push for dominion status. Gandhi had other reasons for wanting to retain ties to Britain (but that is not within scope for this discussion). In this he had the support of the second most influential party in India at that time, the All India Muslim League who wanted only dominion status.
This caused a complete break between Subash Chandra Bose and the rest of the INC who, including J Nehru acceded to Gandhi's demands that India retain dominion status.
By January 26, 1930, the 'hardliners' gained in numbers and strength, J Nehru became the Congress President, the utter failure of the Irwin-Gandhi talks (when Irwin refused to even commit to Dominion status) had all pushed Gandhi away from Dominion Status to Purna Swaraj.
From then on, till January 1950, the Indian political movement (and its people) were united in a desire to cut all ties with Britain as they...to answer your question, saw even commonwealth status as a tie into her colonial past.
| [
"During the twentieth century, the Commonwealth of Nations evolved from the British Empire. Prior to 1926, the British Crown reigned over the British Empire collectively; the Dominions and Crown Colonies were subordinate to the United Kingdom. The Balfour Declaration of 1926 gave complete self-government to the Dom... |
Is there a definitive moment where you transition from "awake" to "asleep"? What happens at that time, if it exists? | There is not a precise moment when the transition occurs. In simple terms, this is because different parts of the brain can "fall asleep" at different times.
The way the onset of sleep is usually defined is in terms of *global* brain activity, as measured using the electroencephalogram (EEG), i.e., electrodes on the scalp. There are characteristic changes in brain activity between wakefulness and sleep.
Using a set of rules, technicians are trained to "score" sleep in 30 second blocks, based on what is the primary mode of brain activity in that 30 seconds. (Mathematical algorithms can do it too). Brain activity is scored as wake, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, or non-REM (NREM) sleep, with NREM sleep divided somewhat arbitrarily into 3 stages: stage 1, stage 2, and stage 3. Sleep onset can be defined as when somebody first moves from wake to stage 1 sleep (lightest stage of sleep). This just means the first 30 second block that is primarily stage 1 sleep.
Across the transition from wake to sleep, there is a gradual lessening of awareness, a gradual change in brain activity, and a gradual reduction in muscle tone. There is not a single discrete moment where the brain suddenly switches into sleep.
The thalamus actually "falls asleep" before the cortex by [several minutes](_URL_1_). We also know now that it is possible for part of the cortex to be asleep while other regions are awake. Sleep isn't just a global brain phenomenon. [It can occur *locally* within neuronal assemblies](_URL_0_). When we are asleep, most of our neuronal assemblies are "asleep", but they may not all make the transition from wake to sleep at the same precise moment. It is also probably possible for some neuronal assemblies to transiently awaken while others are still asleep -- this is now thought to be the basis for some parasomnias, like sleep-walking. | [
"Threshold consciousness (commonly called \"half-asleep\" or \"half-awake\", or \"mind awake body asleep\") describes the same mental state of someone who is moving towards sleep or wakefulness, but has not yet completed the transition. Such transitions are usually brief, but can be extended by sleep disturbance or... |
How did Africans in the occupied part of North Africa react to WWII fighting between the Axis and the Allies? | Just popping in here to recommend a great Egyptian film called "Alexandria... Why?" ("Iskandariyah... lih?") (1979) that focuses on Egyptian responses to the threat of a Nazi invasion while living under a British occupation. The big question the movie asks (which I believe is a dominant narrative in much of the French and British colonial world during the war), is one colonizer worse than the other? | [
"During World War II, North Africa was the battle ground for much of the European-based war. With the invasion of France by Germany in 1940, the Allied forces were quick to take control of the colonies once controlled by the French. The Anglo-American occupation of North Africa began the start of modern-day Algeria... |
How do we know the life expectancy of insects? | Insect life expectancy is generally based on lab studies. You can do it in the field, but you need the insect you're studying to be common so that you can find multiple individuals reliably and track their population's life cycle.
Tracking and tagging insects is a pain in the butt and most insects are too small and disperse too rapidly for radio transmitters, florescent paint, or isotope tracking. | [
"From a life table we can calculate life expectancy as follows. Assume the stages formula_1 are uniformly spaced. The average proportion formula_2 of organisms alive at stage formula_1 between beginning and end is\n",
"Unlike most insects, the adults continue to moult after reaching adulthood, and typically mate ... |
Why is Chinese called Sino | It comes from the Latin word Sinae, Latin for Chinese. Precisely from this derivation:
> The terms "sinology" and "sinologist" were coined around 1838,[2] and use "sino-", derived from Late Latin Sinae from the Greek Sinae, from the Arabic Sin which in turn may derive from Qin, as in the Qin Dynasty. | [
"English, most Indo-European languages, and many others use various forms of the name \"China\" and the prefix \"Sino-\" or \"Sin-\" from the Latin \"Sina\". Europeans had knowledge of a country known in Greek as \"Thina\" or \"Sina\" from the early period; the \"Periplus of the Erythraean Sea\" from perhaps the fi... |
vmware - what is it? how do i set one up? | VMWare is a software which let's you set up a virtual machine. *Virtual* means that it doesn't really exist e.g. there is no real hardware you could touch.
This software will use resources of your actual computer to create the virtual machine. This implies that it can be only a little less powerfull than your PC. (It'll use your RAM for example and if you have 4GB of RAM you can only use as much RAM as is available because other software, your OS will need the rest.)
So you have your virtual PC on which you can install an OS now. You do this with an .iso image (it's what is burnt on the DVD as one single file). You can use some kind of Linux ([Ubuntu](_URL_1_) for example) or download a copy of [Windows 7](_URL_0_) (Links at the bottom).
There is no need to register it since you're only testing it and if it asks for a serial you can ignore it.
And yes, you can mess with it. You could basicaly get viruses and it wouldn't effect your regular PC but I would be careful.
I hope this is helpful. If you have any further questions feel free to reply or sent me a pm.
Have fun! :D | [
"VMware Workstation is a hosted hypervisor that runs on x64 versions of Windows and Linux operating systems (an x86 version of earlier releases was available); it enables users to set up virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical machine, and use them simultaneously along with the actual machine. Each virtual mach... |
How does a real life "warp drive" work, how can we provide the energy needed for it, and will it be possible to develop this technology with regards to space travel within our lifetime? | > How does a real life "warp drive" work,
There's no reason to believe any such thing is physically possible in our universe. So-called "warp drives" are the sorts of things that you can force out of Einstein's equations (or, in more recent versions, our of certain speculative string models) if you work at it a bit. The problem is two-fold:
1. The "drive" is almost always just a solution to the equations, meaning it's just a geometry that happens to behave in the desired way. There's no actual *mechanism*—no "warp engine", if you will—involved in the discussion. As such, calling it a drive is kind of misleading.
2. The equations are being run the wrong way around, which means that they don't necessarily correspond to an actual, physical, geometry. Loosely, Einstein's equations relate the curvature of spacetime to the local energy distribution. The "right" way to use these equations would be to start with a physically reasonable energy distribution and figure out the associated spacetime curvature. But the warp drive solutions go the other way; they just *declare* that spacetime should behave a certain way (so that the drive does what it's supposed to do) and then, if the author feels like it, work out the associated energy distribution. And now the problem shows up, because in all cases these warp drives require energy to behave in ways that we really wouldn't expect energy to behave. Then people say, well if we *had* some matter that behaved that way, then it would work. But we don't, and there's no reason to suspect we can.
> how can we provide the energy needed for it,
Discounting the need for excessive amounts of "exotic matter" (which is code for "stuff we don't really think exists, but which would be really, really cool if it did"), we currently don't have an efficient means of providing the requisite energies. At least, not for any of the models I've seen. A recent pop-sci article seemed to indicate that the energy requirements had come down, [edit: a proper article was provided by Kent767 below; see my comments there.] ~~but the article didn't provide a link to an actual research paper and I can't find any evidence that the person who supposedly did the calculation is actually qualified to comment.~~
> and will it be possible to develop this technology with regards to space travel within our lifetime?
As I mentioned, there's no reason to believe it's even possible in our universe, let alone that it will be accomplished in the near future. | [
"A warp drive is a theoretical superluminal spacecraft propulsion system in many science fiction works, most notably \"Star Trek\" and \"I, Robot\" by Isaac Asimov. A spacecraft equipped with a warp drive may travel at speeds greater than that of light by many orders of magnitude. In contrast to some other fictitio... |
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