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mri machines and how they look inside the brain. | The machine uses an oscillating magnetic field to excite the hydrogen atoms in the water in your body. These emit a radio frequency which it then maps. So it's basically measuring how much water is in your body. Different types of tissue have different amounts of water which creates the contrast and forms the picture.
They can also give you contrast dye in your blood to help features show up better.
_URL_0_ | [
"An MRI gantry remains fixed, and contains strong electromagnets and radio receivers that manipulate hydrogen atoms in the human body via proton nuclear magnetic resonance. The machine then receives and processes the signals given off by the hydrogen atoms in order to produce a 3D image of the interior of the patie... |
What would it look like to be living on a planet in or very "close" to a nebula? | _URL_0_
tldw: it wouldn't look like anything. | [
"Round and planet-shaped, the nebula is also relatively faint. Planetary nebulae are not related to planets at all, but instead are created at the end of a sun-like star's life as its outer layers expand into space while the star's core shrinks to become a white dwarf. The transformed white dwarf star, seen near th... |
tax cuts and jobs act proposal | So, one of the things that the Republican party is doing right now to try to look a little more competent and generate buzz is that they're passing the same bill back and forth between the house and senate as a skeleton outline.
In the process as usual, what happens is that one of the two chambers writes a bill (and there's a bunch of rules about who starts what bills), then they send it to the other house to either be approved, amended, or rejected. If it's amended, it's sent back to the first house. So if the House passes a bill, it goes to the Senate for approval, and if the Senate amends it instead, it goes back to the House, who can amend, pass, or leave it.
What they are doing right now is passing 'skeleton' bills. They're taking turns adding a detail and then passing it as a way to highlight the 'high points' in the bill and to convince people to get onboard with it before the other shoe drops on the costs of the bill.
So far, the high points include:
1. They're going to change the number of income brackets from 7 to 4. This includes a massive tax cut that scales up for the more wealthy, and a tax increase for part time minimum wage earners (the poor). If you work full time, you will experience a tax cut.
2. They are doubling the standard deduction, so for most people it will almost always be cheaper to take the standard deduction than to try to file a long tax return unless you're so rich that you'd hire someone to do this for you anyway.
3. They are eliminating the dependents deduction. If you have 1 or fewer kids, the standard deduction doubling will more than compensate, but if you have three or more kids, unless you're pulling in hundreds of thousand of dollars a year, the tax cuts and jobs act will be a tax increase.
4. They are increasing the child tax credit. The dependents deduction is like ~~8~~ 6-7 times the size of the increase though, so you won't notice it.
5. It reduces but does not eliminate mortgage and property deductions. Any homeowner will notice a squeeze on this side, but landlords who are paying dozens of mortgages on rental properties will probably be bankrupted by it.
6. It repeals the estate tax, so that when the super rich die (the estate tax only ever affected the top 0.2%), their entire vast fortunes are inherited whole by their children, instead of a share going to the government.
But I urge you to keep in mind that this is just a skeleton. This isn't the bill's final form, and not only are all of these points up in the air, but they are using this to delay announcing the drawbacks and downsides of the bill.
Try to keep from mentally evaluating it until they do, because like with part timers, 3+ child families, or real estate speculators you may yet find that you'll get a tax hike out of this bill, and they haven't yet made clear how they are going to pay for this massively expensive tax cut either. | [
"In December 2017, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The Act amended the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 based on tax reform advocated by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration. Major elements include reducing tax rates for businesses and individual... |
Solubility of Sugar | Not trying to be presumptuous here, but have you carried out the experiment more than once and reproduced your results? | [
"Solubility is sensitive to changes in temperature. For example, sugar is more soluble in hot water than cool water. It occurs because solubility constants, like other types of equilibrium constants, are functions of temperature. In accordance with Le Chatelier's Principle, when the dissolution process is endotherm... |
how does the fed determine interest rates? | Interest is, in economic terms, the cost of using money. So interest rates have their own supply/demand curves depending on how much money is available and how much money people want to use. The Federal Reserve can change the supply of money, and thus has some control over interest rates. They also are the primary regulatory agency for banks and can do things like change how much a bank is allowed to loan, which also impacts the supply of money. The Federal Reserve controls the supply side of the interest equation.
In general, the Federal Reserve is tasked with controlling inflation and maximizing employment. These are complicated, often counter-related goals so a balance between them is needed. Cheap money (low interest rates) helps increase employment because there's more capital available and it's easier to start businesses and expand them, that sort of thing. But, cheap money is indeed cheap and so it starts to become devalued and prices rise because there's more money around. So they need to keep interest rates somewhat high to keep a stable currency. | [
"The interest rate channel of monetary policy refers to the effect of monetary policy actions on interest rates that influence the investment and consumption decisions of households and businesses. Along this channel, the transmission of monetary policy to the real economy relies on linkages between central bank in... |
Is there a known limit to selective breeding for physical traits (e.g. size)? | Selective breeding of miniature animals is not uncommon. There are miniature breeds of horse, donkey, cow, chicken, goat, rabbit, and dog, and considerable dwarfing of carp (and probably others that I am unaware of). Some of the dwarfs of these domestic creatures are pretty incredibly small (the Falabella horse is often only about 24 inches (60cm) tall). Undoubtedly, there are some limitations to the extent of intentional dwarfing capable for a given species, as dwarfing is usually achieved by strong artificial selection through inbreeding, and inbreeding leads to an accumulation of recessive, and often deleterious genes, causing other associated health problems. Dwarfing in nature is not at all uncommon, and the teeny sizes achieved in some species are pretty spectacular:
World's smallest frog
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Worlds smallest chameleon
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However, this miniaturization is achieved through adaptation and natural selection, which typically happens over much longer time scales than artificial selection for a single trait. You could probably, with a great deal of effort, miniaturize the hippo. But why do that, when a pygmy hippo already exists?
_URL_1_ | [
"Natural selection can select directly or indirectly for robustness. When mutation rates are high and population sizes are large, populations are predicted to move to more densely connected regions of neutral network as less robust variants have fewer surviving mutant descendants. The conditions under which selecti... |
why have the british liberal democrats fallen in support so much recently? | In 2010 the Liberal Democrats joined the government as the junior half of a coalition. This government followed a programme of austerity, with (among other policies) cutting back on welfare and tripling the cost of university places. Because many Lib-Dem voters had supported them because they believed they were an anti-austerity party, those voters rapidlly became disillusioned and took their support elsewhere. | [
"The Liberal Democrats, who had been in government as coalition partners, suffered the worst defeat they or the previous Liberal Party had suffered since the 1970 general election. Winning just eight seats, the Liberal Democrats lost their position as the UK's third party and found themselves tied in fourth place w... |
why do smaller loans have much higher interest rates than larger loans? | If you ask for 1 pen, it costs you two dollars. If you ask for 100 000 pens, they will only cost you one dollar each. I prefer selling you 100 000 pens at half price, than selling you 1 at full price and have 99 999 sitting around doing nothing.
In a similar way, if you ask for a small amount of money, you pay a big interest, and if you ask for a big amount of money, you pay less interest.
The bank actually wants you to ask them for a LOT of money, so they lower the price the bigger the loan is. Loans is where they get their profits from. | [
"The researcher found it intuitive that basic interest rate caps are most likely to bite at the lower end of the market, with interest rates charged by microfinance institutions generally higher than those by banks and this is driven by a higher cost of funds and higher relative overheads. Transaction costs make la... |
Can you "strain" hearing and damage it that way? | Eyes and ears have a threshold. If you stare at a certain color too long, the cones and rods in your eyes start to tire and the other colors seem to pop out. Same thing when it comes to hearing. You can work it for too long and put too much stress on it. You would think quiet would be a good thing but there is actually a thing such as [too quiet](_URL_0_). | [
"Extensive damage can also be inflicted upon the auditory system. The tympanic membrane (also known as the eardrum) may be perforated by the intensity of the pressure waves. Furthermore, the hair cells, the sound receptors found within the cochlea, can be permanently damaged and can result in a hearing loss of a mi... |
what events or people from the bible have been proven scientifically to have actually occurred/existed? | I don't know if it has been scientifically proven, but several other cultures have stories referring to a great flood that happened at around the same time period as Noah's. | [
"Spanning 50,000 years of human history, \"The Bone Labyrinth\" (released December 15, 2015), reveals a mystery locked within our DNA. An amazing discovery is made when an earthquake reveals a subterranean Catholic chapel in the remote mountains of Croatia. An investigative team finds the bones of a Neanderthal wom... |
what is the reason the leaves fall off the trees in the fall. | With the decrease in the availability of both water and sunlight in the winter, photosynthesis yield is pretty low. So during the winter, those big broad leaves are using up a lot of energy without really doing anything useful, so the tree basically cuts them off to conserve energy and then regrows them once spring comes again | [
"Some trees, particularly oaks and beeches, exhibit a behavior known as \"marcescence\" whereby dead leaves are not shed in the fall and remain on the tree until being blown off by the weather. This is caused by incomplete development of the abscission layer. It is mainly seen in the seedling and sapling stage, alt... |
"Eight million horses and countless mules and donkeys died in the First World War. " "The WWII German Army was 80% Horse Drawn" Is this accurate? How did Germany recover it's horse pop. by the 1940? Did they rely on conquered nations stock? | When the Nazis seized power in 1933, Germany was one of the least motorized societies in Europe. Hitler idolized the motorcar and devoted a considerable drive to increase production, constructing the *Autobahns*, and propagandizing to the population in order to ingrain motorcar ownership and use as German cultural value. However, due to the contradictory nature of the Nazi "economic recovery" and rearmament campaign between 1933-1939, the motorization of Germany, including the army, was nowhere near complete by the eve of WWII:
> As a result of such interventions [in favor of rearmament], the motorway linking Hamburg to Basel was not actually completed until 1962. Moreover, few people had the means to enjoy them before 1939, since Germany was one of the least motorized societies in Europe. In 1935, only 1.6 percent of the population in Germany owned motor vehicles, compared to 4.9 percent in France, 4.5 percent in Britain, and 4.2 percent in Denmark. All these figures were dwarfed by vehicle ownership in the USA, which stood at 20.5 percent, or one in five of the population.
> In his [1933] speech at the Berlin motor show, Hitler announced not only the inauguration of the motorway building program but also the promotion of motor sports and the reduction of the tax burden on car ownership. The result was a 40 percent increase in the number of workers in the motor vehicle industry from March to June 1933 alone. Motorcar production doubled from 1932 to 1933 and again by 1935. Well over a quarter of a million cars were now being produced every year, and prices were much lower than they had been at the end of the 1920s.
...
> Despite the spread of car ownership, however, the motorization of German society had still not got very far by 1939, and to describe it as a powerhouse behind Germany's economic recovery in these years is a considerable exaggeration. By 1938, to be sure, Germany's vehicle production was growing faster than that of any other European country, but there was still only one motor vehicle there per forty-four inhabitants, compared with one for every nineteen in Britain and France. The vast majority of personal travel and the movement of bulk goods was still accounted for by Germany's railway system, Germany's largest employer at the time...
When I speak of the contradictory nature of the Nazi "economic recovery" and rearmament campaign, I speak of how the Nazis focused almost exclusively on rearmament during the period of 1933-1939. It was prioritized above all else, and the industrial demands of meeting the Nazi production targets rapidly exceeded and soon utterly dwarfed available resources. The Nazis pursued a policy of "Autarky", or economic and resource self-sufficiency; but at the same time, the drive to rearmament by 1942, the original goal, to fight a prolonged and potentially two-front war, made Autarky impossible. Such contradictions in both ideological doctrine/rhetoric and in practice were a very common feature of National Socialism.
The production targets set by the Nazi Party grew larger and larger while simultaneously the target date for total rearmament drew nearer and nearer, such as to 1940. The Nazis had to print enormous amounts of currency to run the deficit spending required to import the resources they needed for the rearmament campaign, and this was still not enough. As Hitler had constantly preached about the need for conquering "living space" in the East by invading the Soviet Union, German government finances were pushed to such a disastrous brink that the necessity of launching an aggressive general European War became not only completely inevitable, but always loomed closer and closer, which was the driving force for the Nazis moving the target date for total rearmament closer.
As a result, by the eve of WWII the drive to motorize the Wehrmacht (much less civilian society) was nowhere near complete. The German military still relied extremely heavily on rail travel and horse-drawn vehicles for their logistics. As a result of this in turn, the German military was ironically woefully unprepared to fight a prolonged war of attrition against its enemies, especially the Soviet Union; it was from this logistical and industrial inadequacy that the doctrine of *blitzkrieg* sprung. The entire grand strategy of Nazi Germany going into its invasions of France and then the Soviet Union utterly relied upon the extremely rapid decapitation and capitulation of those enemies - if the invasions bogged down at all, the German economy would either catastrophically collapsed within a relatively short period of time (in the case of France) or would rapidly become completely outclassed by the enemy's industrial capacity and manpower (in the case of the Soviet Union). While the *blitzkrieg* against France worked beyond all expectations and allowed Nazi Germany to compensate for its catastrophic fiscal policy through plundering the majority of the European continent, the invasion of the Soviet Union stalled short of its goals, and the tide soon turned against Germany by early 1943 if not earlier.
> Whatever propaganda messages about the battle for work might claim, Nazi economic policy was driven by the overwhelming desire on the part of Hitler and the leadership, backed up by the armed forces, to prepare for war. Up to the latter part of 1936, this was conducted in a way that aroused few objections from business; when the Four-Year Plan began to come into effect, however, the drive for rearmament began to outpace the economy's ability to supply it, and business began to chafe under a rapidly tightening net of restrictions and controls...
> What Hitler wanted to ensure, however, was that firms competed to fulfill the overall policy aims laid down by himself. Yet those aims were fundamentally contradictory. On the one hand, autarky was designed to prepare Germany for a lengthy war; on the other hand, rearmament was pursued with a headlong abandon that paid scant regard to the dictates of national self-sufficiency. Measured by its own aims, the Nazi regime had only succeeded partially by the summer of 1939. Its preparations for a large-scale war were inadequate, its armaments program incomplete; drastic shortages of raw materials meant that targets for the construction of tanks, ships, planes, and weapons of war were not remotely being met; and the situation was exacerbated by Hitler's program. The answer was plunder...The enormous stresses and strains built up in the German economy between 1933 and 1939 could, Hitler himself explicitly argued on several occasions, ultimately only be resolved by the conquest of living-space in the east.
Source: *The Third Reich in Power*, by Richard Evans | [
"Battle losses of horses were approximately 25 percent of all war-related equine deaths between 1914 and 1916. Disease and exhaustion accounted for the remainder. The highest death rates were in East Africa, where in 1916 alone deaths of the original mounts and remounts accounted for 290% of the initial stock numbe... |
why do so many white, western liberals and progressives defend islam? | They tend to support freedom of religion. They tend to support civil rights for minorities. Seems strange to think of them as a minority but in the US and Western countries they are. | [
"Hayri Abaza argues that the failure to distinguish between Islam and Islamism leads many in the West to support illiberal Islamic regimes, to the detriment of progressive moderates who seek to separate religion from politics.\n",
"Advocating the superiority of Islam, Butt has said that \"Islam is a way of life, ... |
Why did Irish monks play such an important role in the christianization of Europe? | The easy answer is that they believed in mission and did go out and talked about God..
But that is probably not the answer you are after.
Western christianity formed and was culturally relevant to the postlatin world. But north of europe was never part of the roman empire and they did not share all the cultural references.
In Ireland a monastic movment begun with St:Patrick during the 5th century (note that it´s been 100 years of christian statechurch in the Roman empire, the church there has in many ways stoped in it´s development). The irish movment did become culturaly relevant in a celtic culture, a thing that nearly all succesfull missionary movments have. The movment also had mission as a big part of it´s movment so they did continue to spread christianity.
The monks did begun to leave Ireland to Scotland/England and continued to found monastaries that did spread christianity. From these places visionaris did come that walked out to europe to revitalise the church in France and to spread christianity in northen europe.
And u/NFB42 is totaly correct that one of the culturally relevant things was that they didn´t focus on cities, instead towns formed around the irish christian centers. | [
"The Irish monks took part in the conversion of Scotland and the north of Great Britain], establishing numerous monasteries, such as Iona Abbey, founded by Columba in Scotland in 563 and Lindisfarne, founded by Aidan in Northumbria in 635. The Irish missionaries brought their art to Britain along with their religio... |
how are games like "breath of the wild" ported over to a completely different console (switch) with different hardware, yet are flawlessly identical when playing both? | I don't know the precise answer but the best vague one I can give is that the GPU/CPU architecture on the switch is well known since it runs off Tegra X1 and uses the Maxwell architecture which there is lots of information on.
The previous generation consoles were an absolute nightmare to Port games to due to how closed off and complicated hardware was due extreme paranoia of piracy. I heard that porting games to PS3 was so difficult that many devs just opted not to bother and go for the Xbox instead.
The Switch uses the same chipset as the shield tablet which runs Android apps pretty well so I imagine it being easy to adjust to. | [
"Another instance of the same engine being used between games is on the Nintendo 64, in which most games use the same format; although they use different sound banks, as expected. A utility known as the N64 Midi Tool was created to edit the sequences that the majority of Nintendo 64 games use, though it does not co... |
How did sailor manage navigation, back in the day? | Navigation can be done with the stars, and the use of a sextant, which was in use from about 18th century onwards. This method can be very precise, but is reliant on clear skies. Navigation becomes super-precise when a clock that is powered by an internal spring mechanism is invented. This was John Harrison, in the 18th century. He made the marine chronometer. Up until then clocks had a pendulum. The pendulum could be affected by the three-dimensional movement of the ship, which would throw the mechanism off and make it inaccurate.
Prior to this, there was the backstaff, which is a reflecting instrument that could be used to determine the height of the sun or moon and angles and such (I am not sure of the exact method). The technique has a long history, and many variations, like the cross staff and the qudrant, but can be verified from the 17th century onwards. There is also the astrolabe (which also a long history), which is used to measure and calculate the position of celestial bodies. It was adapted to be used at sea from the 17th century onwards.
Ther are also different types of chart. Portlan charts are charts made by estimated distances between certain landmarks, rather than detailing the coastal topography. Experience was crucial factor in navigation, and when approaching a port or harbour a ship could expect to hire a local 'pilot', who had expert knowledge of that particular area, to navigate them through those waters.
Speed was be measured with a chip log. This is a board that is attached to a length of string on a reel, which has knots on it at regular intervals. The board is thrown overboard, the idea that is dragged behind as it resists the water. How much string is payed out in a certain amount of time while tell you how many knots per hour you are travelling.
There are many methods for navigation, and some are more accurate than others. Celestial navigation can be very accraute, but it would also depend on the quality of the instrument, the weather and the qaulity of your reference material - your star chart of sea chart. for a period, sea charts were very expensive and some were practically state secrets in the effort to keep certsin locations and trade routes from being exploited by rival nations.
| [
"There is some controversy about the legality of sailing single-handed over long distances, as the navigation rules require \"that every vessel shall at all times maintain a proper lookout...\"; single-handed sailors can only keep a sporadic lookout, due to the need to sleep, tend to navigation, etc.\n",
"This no... |
What would happen if you pushed at the baby during birth? | No once, labour has started there's no stopping it. The contractions get progressively more and more forceful and not to mention the amniotic sac is burst at this point. So you can't push back and keep it in there for a few more days. Eventually something will give, probably the baby. Please don't perform an experiment to test this. | [
"BULLET::::- Shaken baby syndrome. Shaking a baby is a common form of child abuse that often results in permanent neurological damage (80% of cases) or death (30% of cases). Damage results from intracranial hypertension (increased pressure in the skull) after bleeding in the brain, damage to the spinal cord and nec... |
what will happen to apartment owners when the buildings get too old and must be demolished. do they own the air where there apt used to be? | What will usually happen is that the individual owners will take a vote to all sell their legal rights to the underlying land, move away, and divide the money among themselves. Then the developer who bought the land will build a new building there. In the United States, when apartments are each separately owned, they usually do so as a "condominium" which involves a very complicated written agreement that covers this situation. The condominium agreement specifies things like who has to pay to keep up the central garden and make roof repairs. It also will contain a provision that requires everyone to sell the property if some portion of them (such as 80%) vote to do so, and how to split the money. These agreements can last over 100 years or more, even when individual owners buy and sell their individual apartments. Because the government will only allow apartment buildings on certain pieces of land, the land under an apartment building usually stays quite valuable even if the specific building needs to be torn down and replaced.
Source: Former condominium owner. | [
"By 1990, the apartment building had been converted into subsidized housing. The building closed in 2005, and shortly thereafter a fire damaged the interior. In 2008, it was placed on the demolition list by the city. In 2011 it was sold at auction. \n",
"As a government response to the urban decay in 2018, it was... |
Can physical trauma (e.g. a bullet), kill bacteria/viruses? | It can definitely kill bacteria. Some common methods for ~~smashing~~ mechanically disrupting cells are bead-beating and sonication. I guess mechanical disruption of enveloped viruses would work just as well, but would be more difficult for non-enveloped viruses. Unfortunately guns are not standard lab equipment.
_URL_0_
_URL_1_[35-4]0207291633_403.pdf | [
"Injuries may be caused by any combination of external forces that act physically against the body. The leading causes of traumatic death are blunt trauma, motor vehicle collisions, and falls, followed by penetrating trauma such as stab wounds or impaled objects. Subsets of blunt trauma are both the number one and ... |
what is a flux capacitor? | The core component of the time machine from the Back To The Future film series. It's just random technobabble, it doesn't actually exit in real life. | [
"A capacitor is a passive two-terminal electronic component that stores electrical energy in an electric field. The effect of a capacitor is known as capacitance. While some capacitance exists between any two electrical conductors in proximity in a circuit, a capacitor is a component designed to add capacitance to ... |
If photons can only have energies equal to the difference between electron levels, how does blackbody radiation give off a continuous spectrum? | Blackbody radiation arises from the motion of atoms and molecules, and the fact that they are ultimately composed of charged objects.
It does not come from atomic transitions to less-excited states. That is a separate component.
For the specific processes that result in thermal radiation, see [Bremsstrahlung](_URL_0_) and [dipole oscillation](_URL_1_) | [
"This factor shifts the peak of the distribution to higher energies. These peaks are the \"mode\" energy of a photon, when binned using equal-size bins of frequency or wavelength, respectively. Meanwhile, the \"average\" energy of a photon from a blackbody is\n",
"The conversion between energy-based PAR and photo... |
why most of the time lead singers in songs produced by dj-producers aren't mentioned in the title of the song, like in some of avicii's songs | The industry attaches the name to the project they are promoting for the song. If it is a David Guetta song for his album, they will call it that. But if David Guetta produces the song for someone else, it will be that persons name.
So many songs are written and completely done and then they just figure out who they will attach to it. They shop different famous people. | [
"They met up in January 2001 in London to record the song. He went into a studio with only three tracks for the mix, and was impressed that there were many technicians and programmers that probably had been using a hundred. However, the singer was protecting the idea of the raw version, and said: \"This is how we w... |
why are trains/cars/planes so loud when they go by outside but relatively quiet when you're inside them? | No expert but I would Imagine its just your standard sound deadening material like is used in cars.
Start removing all those materials and you end up in an uncomfortable and loud metal box. | [
"It is not uncommon for the sound of a train's whistle to propagate for miles; yet vehicle operators still have a difficult time hearing the warning signal due to the vehicle's soundproofing and ambient noise within the cab (such as engine, road, radio, and conversation noises).\n",
"BULLET::::- Train noise can b... |
What would the outcome of the Crittenden compromise be if it went into effect? | Hi OP! I've removed this post since it asks respondents to speculate, which is [against rules of this subreddit](_URL_0_). Do consider x-posting to the creative minds over in /r/HistoricalWhatIf | [
"The Crittenden proposals were also discussed at the Peace Conference of 1861, a meeting of more than 100 of the nation's leading politicians, held February 8-27, 1861, in Washington, D.C. The conference, led by former President John Tyler, was the final formal effort of the states to avert the start of war. There ... |
When did the right-wing become associated with better management of the economy? | This begs the question. I don't believe that's a common perception at all, except within the right wing itself, of course. | [
"Although the right-wing originated with traditional conservatives, monarchists, and reactionaries, the term extreme right-wing has also been applied to movements including fascism, Nazism, and racial supremacy. From the 1830s to the 1880s, there was a shift in the Western world of social class structure and the ec... |
In this picture (link below) hanging up in my town's town hall showing an American colonist and some Native people in the mid 1600s, how accurately depicted are their clothing? | It is entirely inaccurate. The depiction of the Puritan colonist instructing and evangelizing the compliant, submissive Natives is little more than a fantasy.
But more on the clothing. New England colonists often commented on how the Natives there wore less clothing, but they only wore less clothing when the climate merited it. You would not likely see a loincloth-clad Native in the freezing New England winter. And neither would you see many Puritan settlers wearing stifling dress in the summer either. And it would have rarely gotten so hot that the Native men would only wear a loincloth.
Puritan settlers also wore more than just gray and black and white. Their attire tended to be more colorful day to day. They would not likely have worn the buckles as they would have been seen as too ostentatious to daily wear. Any Puritan missionary would almost certainly be attired differently from the norm, more likely to wear the deerskin breeches and shirts of their Native audience than their Sunday best. That's mostly because the Natives were rarely willing to venture far away from home just to hear a preacher speak. It was more likely the preacher would head out into Indian country.
Puritan elites may have dressed in a similar manner on special occasions, but not often. The majority of non-elite Puritans would have dressed in a far more relaxed manner to better facilitate their labor. Pilgrim attire is not well suited to cooking, woodcutting, farming, fishing, sailing, or blacksmithing.
**Sources:**
- Sargent Bush, "America's Origin Myth: Remembering Plymouth Rock"
- Paul Heike, *The Myths That Made America: An Introduction to American Studies* | [
"He was one of the first settlers at the artist colony in Grossmont on El Granito San Diego, with other famous artists like poet John Vance Cheney, music critic Havrah Hubbard and opera singer Schumann-Heink. Madame Schumann-Heink had a picture of Clark hung in her home. She felt he had contributed an enormous amou... |
Is there any proof or reasoning behind people associating particular moods with particular alcohols (whiskey makes me fight) Or is it just a placebo effect? | It's placebo. Chemically, whiskey, vodka, rum, etc., are all pretty much the same: about 40% ethanol, 60% water, and trace impurities and flavorings. | [
"Ethanol is used as an anxiolytic, sometimes by self-medication. fMRI can measure the anxiolytic effects of alcohol in the human brain. The British National Formulary states, \"Alcohol is a poor hypnotic because its diuretic action interferes with sleep during the latter part of the night.\" Alcohol is also known t... |
How big is the Moon's shadow during a solar eclipse? | It all depends on how close the moon is to the earth at the time of the eclipse. Sometimes it can be an Annular eclipse and there is no place that the sun is completely blocked out. It looks like the largest that it can be is approximately 250 km | [
"A partial lunar eclipse took place on April 23, 1948. A tiny bite out of the Moon may have been visible at maximum, though just 2% of the Moon was shadowed in a partial eclipse which lasted for 34 minutes and 18 seconds. A shading across the moon from the Earth's penumbral shadow should have been visible at maximu... |
In 1975, Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was ‘dismissed’ by the Governor-General. How much evidence is there that both the CIA and the Nixon/Ford administrations played a significant role in the dismissal, along with Rupert Murdoch? If so, why? | So firstly, some background: Gough Whitlam became Prime Minister of Australia in 1972, and became the first Labor Prime Minister since 1949. Labor, as a result of being out of power for over two decades, had a progressive legislative agenda which they were eager to enact, and which they wanted to do without delay after 23 very, very, very long years of conservative government.
In order to fund this agenda, the Whitlam government attempted to circumvent the Loans Council (which it considered very conservative and likely to run interference for the conservatives) and borrow around 4 billion dollars via a London-based commodities dealer, Tirath Khemlani, who claimed to have access to vast Middle Eastern funds (and who had apparently arranged government loans for the UK, France, and Italy in the previous year). The mooted deal with Khemlani ended up falling apart once it became the focus of public scrutiny, which neither party really wanted. Deputy Prime Minister/Treasurer Jim Cairns tried pursuing other avenues for fundraising, and it apparently happened that Cairns (whether freely or as a victim of subterfuge) signed a deal with a Melbourne businessman, George Harris, which promised Harris a 2.5% brokerage fee for securing a loan for something up to $500 million.
Cairns then, in parliament, denied having signed anything like this. A photocopy of the deal was promptly leaked to the News Limited newspapers (which is where Rupert Murdoch comes in; the future Fox News owner was perhaps unsurprisingly not a supporter of the Whitlam government's progressive agenda at this point). This is also where the CIA come in; Jenny Hocking in *Gough Whitlam: His Life* quotes a CIA daily report prepared for President Gerald Ford as saying that 'some of the evidence had been fabricated', though it's unclear who exactly fabricated the evidence. In any case, Cairns misleading parliament meant that Gough Whitlam sacked him as Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer, which is the kind of internal scandal a government does not want.
Whitlam as Prime Minister had told parliament that the Labor Cabinet was no longer in touch with Tirath Khemlani. However, the Melbourne Herald (which was *not* a Murdoch publication) dispatched a reporter to London to investigate, and found that indeed the Labor government's Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor turned out to be continuing to communicate with Khemlani, despite his authority to negotiate on such matters being revoked in May. Though nobody could find evidence of Whitlam knowing anything about this (with journalists and the opposition definitely trying), this meant that Whitlam had mislead parliament, and so in October 1975 he sacked Connor.
The Liberal/Country Party Coalition, who were in opposition, took this as a justification to block Supply (effectively, the government legislation that allows the release of funds to pay the government's bills) from the 16th of October 1975 in the Senator. Initially, at the 1974 election, Labor had 29 Senators, and the Coalition had 29 Senators, with 2 independents. One of these independents joined the Liberal Party in February 1975. A Labor Senator resigned to enter the judiciary, and was replaced (against previous convention) by an independent. Then, a Labor Senator passed away, and was replaced by a nominally Labor Senator who was nominated by Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson, Albert Field, who was vocally anti-Whitlam. When Field joined the Senate in October 1975, he was prepared to vote against Supply, thus enabling the Coalition to have the numbers in the Senate to outright block Supply, and thus cause a crisis which necessarily would have to end in a new election.
When political circumstances changed, it was the Governor General, Sir John Kerr, that changed them. In Australia, the Governor-General is, effectively, the representative of the British monarch, who has the power to sign Australian legislation into law (but who, as with the Queen, is usually apolitical in how they discharge their duties). Gough Whitlam had requested that Kerr call a 'half-Senate election' to resolve the issue (i.e., to elect a new Senate, rather than, at most elections, the House of Representatives and the Senate), and his understanding was that Kerr was planning to do this.
However, on November 11th, 1975, Kerr dismissed the government, sacking Whitlam and installing the Opposition leader, Malcolm Fraser, as the new Prime Minister in the interim period before an imminent new election. Whitlam was, shall we say, unimpressed by this, as John Kerr had a Labor background, and was someone he had advised the Queen to install as Governor General. Thus Whitlam's famous quote: *well may we say, God save the Queen, because nothing will save the Governor General.*
These events have, perhaps unsurprisingly, long been the source of controversy politically, and thus conspiracy theories (both legitimate and more far-fetched). Re: the CIA, it's a matter of record that they were upset by some of the Whitlam government's actions. In particular, in March 1973, Lionel Murphy, the Attorney-General (and the Senator who quit parliament in 1975 to join the High Court I mentioned earlier) had 'raided' ASIO (the Australian spy agency), demanding to see the relevant files on right-wing Croatian separatists involved in bombing Yugoslavian interests in Australia (Murphy had heard that ASIO were downplaying these activities). US intelligence agencies, as a result of this 'raid', promptly cut off their flow of information to ASIO (something that Whitlam amended by providing reassurances relatively shortly afterwards). Relations between ASIO and the Whitlam government had been troubled from the start - ASIO had for a long time monitored Labor members they suspected of being communists, including Jim Cairns (mentioned earlier), and the ASIO official history by John Blaxland mentions that ASIO acted as a conduit to transmit American concerns about the Whitlam government to the political and military establishment. The US establishment was also apparently concerned with Jim Cairns becoming Deputy Prime Minister (as he did at the 1974 election), partly for this reason - they saw him as being unacceptably left-wing, and perhaps even a secret communist. The ASIO official history also provides evidence that US embassy officials had warned ASIO at least twice during 1975 that the Labor government was a potential threat to their willingness to share information.
In late October 1975 - a few weeks into the Supply crisis - Gough Whitlam demanded of ASIO a list of all CIA officers active in Australia in the last 10 years. The Prime Minister then *publicly* accused an official at Pine Gap of being a CIA operative who had been collaborating with the Opposition. This received a lot of attention in the media, as you can imagine, further escalating the political crisis. This led to, essentially, the local CIA chief relaying to ASIO's senior liaison officer in Washington that further publicity would lead to...changes. Whitlam was spooked by what he thought was a rather sinister threat, but sought to appease Washington that he would behave in future.
Despite what are *clearly* quite tense relations here, John Blaxland, in the official ASIO history, claims to have found no evidence that the CIA played any role in Whitlam's removal. This is of course an official ASIO history, and so while John Blaxland is a diligent historian who has unparalleled access to documents, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that it might sometimes tell an official story rather than the truth (e.g., by shredding particular documents before providing access to Blaxland, as a paper in the *Alternative Law Journal* by Michael Head argues). Head also brings up the claims of Christopher Boyce that the CIA referred to Kerr as 'our man'; Boyce was a young American intelligence analyst who was convicted for selling secrets to the Soviets. He is sometimes seen by leftist types like John Pilger as a hero who was framed by the Americans for spilling their secrets. As anyone who's read a John Le Carre novel would be very aware, espionage is not exactly somewhere where information is reliable; it's certainly possible that Boyce's claims are true, but it may well be the case that they're someone's misinformation. For what it's worth, Boyce's claims don't figure into Hocking's portrayal of events at all, and Blaxland sees Boyce as fundamentally untrustworthy.
As to what caused Kerr's actions, Hocking argues that Kerr had a stronger relationship with Malcolm Fraser than Whitlam realised, that Kerr had very little trust in Whitlam, and that Kerr ultimately sided with a legal opinion (one he'd in fact previously told Whitlam was 'bullshit', giving Whitlam a false sense of security) that the dismissal was the correct legal way to resolve the constitutional crisis. Kerr, the Governor-General, had also previously worked for military intelligence and had many contacts within the intelligence community. Kerr, according to Jenny Hocking, *had* sought advice from ASIO about the CIA threats which happened after Whitlam named a Pine Gap official as being CIA (despite that person not being on the official list he demanded, apparently). It’s not inconceivable that Kerr had come to the conclusion that Whitlam's behaviour ultimately threatened Australian interests. | [
"The Whitlam government ended in 1975 with a constitutional crisis in which Governor-General John Kerr dismissed the ministry and appointed Opposition Leader Malcolm Fraser as prime minister, an act in which the monarch herself was not consulted and, when approached after the event, pointedly refused to intervene, ... |
if newton's third law, that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, is true, then why is there acceleration at all in the universe? | You're misinterpreting the 3rd law. I hate that translation of it, but it's the one that everybody uses. A much better way to formulate it is "for every force exerted by one object on another, there is another equal force by the second object on the first".
In other words, I push on the wall, the wall pushes back at me, and I feel it as pressure on my hand.
A falling ball is being pulled on by the earth, and the ball is pulling on the earth just the same (of course, the movement of the earth towards the ball is so small as to be unnoticeable).
I push the water back with my paddle, the water pushes me forward, so my boat moves.
If it weren't for the 3rd law, acceleration would be *impossible*. | [
"As described by the third of Newton's laws of motion of classical mechanics, all forces occur in pairs such that if one object exerts a force on another object, then the second object exerts an equal and opposite reaction force on the first. The third law is also more generally stated as: \"To every action there i... |
Do people with higher alcohol tolerances actually process alcohol more efficiently (i.e., are their BACs comparatively lower), or are they simply more accustomed to handling the effects of alcohol? | That depends who you are comparing. Females typically have far less [alcohol dehydrogenase](_URL_1_) activity which is an enzyme responsible for alcohol 'processing' so in this case males do process alcohol more efficiently. If you are talking about people who frequently consume alcohol so they can have more drinks in one sitting than everyone else at the party then the likely cause (ignoring Liver damage or other pathology) is [receptor desensitization](_URL_0_). Any neuron that is frequently stimulated will become less sensitive to the stimulus. Note how this has nothing to do with the actual processing of alcohol, just alcohols apparent effects on the brain. A person with high alcohol tolerance will have the same BAC as someone with low alcohol tolerance who drank the same amount as them but they will only experience much milder effects because of the desensitization. | [
"Direct alcohol tolerance is largely dependent on body size. Large-bodied people will require more alcohol to reach insobriety than lightly built people. Thus men, being larger than women on average, will have a higher alcohol tolerance. The alcohol tolerance is also connected with activity of \"alcohol dehydrogena... |
what is the difference between attraction, connection, and love? | It varies since its such a subjective topic but attraction commonly refers to being physically attracted to the other person aka thinking theyre pretty. A connection tends to be getting along with another person and having a lot in common aka liking eachother (though connection implies its coupled with attraction). Love is a great amount of care for someone you have a connection with and generally are attracted to (romantic love).
Obviously an emotion is hard to explain and very subjective but thats how I would determine it. | [
"Love has many different definitions ranging from a set of purely biological and chemical processes to a religious concept. As a character strength, love is a mutual feeling between two people characterized by attachment, comfort, and generally positive feelings. It can be broken down into 3 categories: love betwee... |
why isn't there a company that makes really good looking cars(lambo category) with mediocre engines?wouldn't they sell a lot? | They would not sell much at all. The entire reason that top end sports cars are lusted after is their performance. To have a car that looks like one but does not perform like would be absolutely embarrassing. | [
"Autocar's \"Custom Engineering\" process for meeting each customer's needs led to a reputation as \"World's Finest\". White replaced Blue Streak engines with its own Mustang, and production of gasoline-powered trucks ended in 1965.\n",
"Many aftermarket improvements have been offered over time to address some of... |
why does one have no strength when waking up? | Your body paralyzes itself while you're asleep so you won't act out your dreams. It's takes some time for your body to regain full strength from it after you wake up.
Fun fact, this is the same cause as sleep paralysis, or waking nightmares. You wake up at night, but your body is still locked, so you can't move, and your still tired brain hallucinates nightmares. | [
"A phenomenon of REM sleep, muscular paralysis, occurs at an inappropriate time. This loss of tonus is caused by massive inhibition of motor neurons in the spinal cord. When this happens during waking, the victim of a cataplectic attack loses control of his or her muscles. As in REM sleep, the person continues to b... |
How did redlining in the United States create the racial make up of the suburbs? | Play around here.
_URL_0_
This is my city, and I’ve researched the topic of redlining after this map came out. I’ve also talked to the author of that project. Redlining happened in the late 30’s.
So Louisville is an old city and a river city. Most of the early economy was based on the river and most jobs and houses were close to the river. We also had segregated neighborhoods that were spread out in a few different areas, but mostly they were the south part of the west side of town and on the eastern edge. The center was downtown and south of that was a very rich Victorian neighborhood.
So all this changed in 1937, the year of the Great Flood. This flood ravaged the Ohio river valley and may be the highest water the Ohio river has ever seen, even in prehistoric times. This flood caused complete losses of houses and businesses.
So redlining was started as a way to protect banks from making bad loans and losing money and causing another financial crisis. This happened at a time where the US was coming out of the Great Depression and this was a very real threat. So they made maps based on race, income, etc... but in Louisville they also made decisions based on potential for flooding.
The Great Flood created a mass migration out of the city into the suburbs, that also happened to be the high ground. People that couldn’t afford to leave, stayed in the flood prone area west of downtown. Because of redlining property values also dropped, meaning some couldn’t sell their houses. Businesses closed or moved out leaving many people jobless.
Through the war there was great growth in our city. Factory jobs were plentiful and whole industries sprung up over night almost. Because of the flood, no factories were built near the river. They were built outside the city, thus furthering the migration. Subdivisions were going up on farm land and other vacant land. And were outside the city proper and therefore didn’t get city services. So they formed their own cities. We have 81 in the county, some were whites only, but others were just exclusive to keep blacks out.
So effectively half of the town lost high earners, lost jobs, and lost property value the other half moved away and formed their own cities and neighborhoods shutting out the rest.
So what’s interesting in Louisville is that redlining caused a lot of problems for black people, but it mostly affected the entire west side of the city, regardless of race. Because of the flooding, white only neighborhoods were also redlined causing them the same fate. Currently the neighborhood I work in is demographically still 78% white, but suffered the same fate as the black neighborhoods south of it. | [
"In 1934 the practice of redlining neighborhoods came into existence through the National Housing Act of 1934. This practice, also known as mortgage discrimination, began when the federal government and the newly formed Federal Housing Administration allowed the Home Owners' Loan Corporation to create \"residential... |
what prevents a gas station employee from lying about how much i won on a lottery ticket like powerball and then stealing the winnings? | Gas Stations don't pay out anything over a few hundred dollars.
If you win any significant amount then you have to go to the State Gambling Bureau and claim the money. | [
"A group of seven gas station employees in Queens, New York City, play the lottery every week and dream about what they would do with the winnings. When they do finally hit the jackpot, the coworkers learn that money may solve some problems, but it creates new ones.\n",
"There have also been several cases of cash... |
why do i have to go to the pharmacy 12 times a year to buy birth control pills, instead of being able to purchase my entire year-long prescription at once? | Pharmtech here!
If you live in the United States, a 12-month prescription is completely doable, though you may have to pay a bit more.
All non-controlled prescriptions expire after 365 days. Most birth controls are written in for either a 4-week (1 pack) or 12-week (3 pack) regimen, as that's the standard for insurance coverage in the US (this can vary if you skip placebos, which many people do).
If you're billing to insurance, call the customer service number on the back of your card and see what their formulary has to say about birth control - what's the maximum days supply you can get, and what is the copay difference between 30 and 90 days? Is it possible to get an override for 12 months at once? If your insurance will only cover 3 months at a time, and your biggest concern is the mild inconvenience of a trip to the pharmacy, consider mail order. It's decently easy to set up, and your pills will come to you rather than you having to go to them.
If you're not billing to insurance (or your insurance doesn't cover 12 months), getting a full year at once is quite doable, but an investment. Most retail pharmacies don't go lower than $9/pack on bc, so you're looking at $108 for a year - and that's *IF* your prescription (there are dozens of different formulations of birth control pills) happens to be one of the less expensive ones. If you decide to go that route, and your doctor is writing you an annual prescription for 1 pack with 11 refills anyway, just ask them nicely to write for 12 packs with 0 refills. If they have some reason for wanting you to pick up less frequently, they'll discuss that with you. When you get to the pharmacy to pick up your 12 months supply, double check *before you leave* that the expiration dates will last you through those 12 months; some formulations come pretty short-dated.
If you have any other questions, I can do my best to help. | [
"This is the reason why organizations like \"Worst Pill, Best Pill\" recommend not to use/prescribe new medications before being in the market for at least ten years (except in the case of important new drugs that treat previously unsolved problems).\n",
"For instance, someone using oral forms of hormonal birth c... |
if scotland exits from the union, what animal would replace the unicorn on the british coa? | Another lion, or perhaps the welsh dragon? | [
"In May 2008, a joint application submitted by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) and the Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT) was approved by the Scottish Government allowing for a trial reintroduction of the European beaver to the Knapdale Forest in Mid-Argyll. If the trial is successful then the European b... |
why do asians/africans/southern europeans have a higher rate of lactose intolerance, while nordic europeans rarely have it at all? | Genetic mutation thousands of years ago. Travel was more difficult, so Europeans bred with Europeans, Africans with Africans, etc.
Somewhere along the line, a European had a genetic mutation that made it so they could handle milk. As the mutation proved beneficial, evolution continued to hand it down as they reproduced.
I am not sure if the mutation is dominant, but if it is, as people of different ethnicities get together and spawn offspring, the mutation may become more prevalent throughout the different ethnicities. But it will not be cultural until Europeans (descent) breed with Africans, or European (descent) breeds with Asians, on and on. | [
"Some populations, from an evolutionary perspective, have a better genetic makeup for tolerating lactose than others. In northern European countries, lack of Vitamin D from the sun is balanced by consuming more milk and therefore more calcium. These countries' people have adapted a tolerance to lactose. Conversely,... |
if earth and mars switched places, would life still sustain on earth? | Assuming they were the same size and had the same atmosphere as they currently are, then the biggest differences would be temperature, due to the distance from the sun, and the stability of orbits. Other thing like the length of the year doesn't really affect sustaining life.
Earth is ~150M km from the sun, while Mars is ~225M km, or ~50% further away, so it would get only 45% as much light. There are other sources of heat (e.g. radioactive decay in the Earth's core) but sunlight is by far the greatest factor (~2,000 times more than anything else). So, a 45% reduction in sunlight means a 45% reduction in temperature. The average temperature of Earth is 15 deg C (288 deg Kelvin), that math would say it would become 187 deg K (-72 deg C). The average temperature of Mars is -66 deg C (207 deg Kelvin), so this is pretty close. Earth has more water, which means snow that reflects even more light so the Earth would probably be even colder.
There would be other affects such as the stability of the orbits of the planets, and Scientific American discussed [this](_URL_0_) | [
"The magnetic and climatic histories of Mars and Earth are extremely different, and would have greatly dictated the evolution of both biospheres. Around four billion years ago, the Martian dynamo shut down following a proposed period when a long-lasting Noachian ocean existed, and when life may have existed at the ... |
are there any classic signs/symptoms that indicate someone is about to have a heart attack? | In the boy scouts we learned that a heart attack is characterized by: Nausea, Excess Sweating, Chest pain, Weakness/faintness, and Shortness of breath.
Heart attack or not if you or someone around you had these symptoms I'd be pretty concerned | [
"The symptoms are often very similar to those of myocardial infarction (heart attack), with the most common being persistent chest pain. Other symptoms can include rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, sweating, extreme tiredness, nausea, and dizziness.\n",
"If acute coronary syndrome (\"heart attack\") is suspec... |
Can gyroscopes at the end of an axle or some other "no thrust" alternative be used to control the rate of precession of a big spinning wheel in space? | Contrary to what /u/SpaceIsKindOfCool said, there is a no-thrust solution to your problem. Sun-synchronous orbits use Earth's prolate shape to generate the necessary precession. [Wikipedia](_URL_0_) actually has all the math you need to figure it out. It turns out that the inclination required for a Sun-synchronous orbit at 700 km altitude is ~98.16º so that seems in line with your desires. No thrust needed, Earth's bulge will provide all your precession for you!
The biggest problem is really just the polar orbit in general, though. That's expensive. For a relatively small satellite that will never be serviced or otherwise visited, it's one thing, but frequently shuttling to a polar orbit will get very expensive very quickly.
It might be worth considering a more equatorial orbit; it would be easy to have the spaceship spin once per orbit around its own axis so that it is always in a fixed orientation with respect to the sun; that way it would receive direct sunlight at the same angle except while obscured by the Earth. The solar panels could still be mounted in a fixed orientation and always be at the optimal angle while illuminated (for slightly more than half of its orbital period), and the radiators would likewise always be pointed away from the sun. Really the only downside is that you only get sunlight for slightly more than 50% of the time. However, the added fixed cost of extra solar panels to compensate would probably offset the launch costs that you'd rack up for construction alone, let alone subsequent shuttling costs. Especially since you'd probably be subsidizing or outright paying for the launch facility itself, too (since it doesn't exist and there are no plans or even really much of a need for one). | [
"Two gyroscopes are used to cancel gyroscopic precession, the tendency of a gyroscope to twist at right angles to an input torque. By mounting a pair of gyroscopes (of the same rotational inertia and spinning at the same speed in opposite directions) at right angles the precessions are cancelled and the platform wi... |
was Aristotle held in high regard by roman/Greek philosophers in AD250? | Yes. The Peripatetic School, founded by Aristotle, was still around in 250. It was in decline by that point, and its members focused more on preserving Aristotle's own work than expanding on it, but the vital thread of Aristotlean philosophy was picked up by the Neoplatonists (who, despite their name, were a quasi-mystical synthesis of Plato and Aristotle, and held the latter in high regard), and by Christian philosophers (Origen, for example) who drew on Aristotlean (and Platonic, and Neoplatonic) concepts to shape their understanding of the divine.
(We're dealing here with mostly Hellenistic schools and philosophers, by the way; Rome itself was never a center of philosophy like Athens or Alexandria. They left that sort of thing to the Greeks. But that's another topic entirely.) | [
"Although some knowledge of Aristotle seems to have lingered on in the ecclesiastical centres of western Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, by the ninth century nearly all that was known of Aristotle consisted of Boethius's commentaries on the \"Organon\", and a few abridgments made by Latin authors of the ... |
Why were there no eunuchs in the Japanese court? | [This was asked once before!](_URL_0_) My answer was not very satisfactory though, but it's the only thing I've ever read that approached the question. I'd caution you not to make too much of the concubines and sexual access though. Sterility is a red herring! Eunuchs are more than castration! So don't automatically assume sexual control = eunuchs and eunuchs = sexual control, because as you can see, it doesn't work as a cultural universal! | [
"Eunuchs have existed in China since about 4,000 years ago, were imperial servants by 3,000 years ago, and were common as civil servants by the time of the Qin dynasty. From those ancient times until the Sui Dynasty, castration was both a traditional punishment (one of the Five Punishments) and a means of gaining e... |
why do we measure speed by the hour instead of minutes? | 60 miles per hour (sorry, using the units I'm most comfortable with on the road) is 1 mile per minute. I go 80 on the highways around here, and it's comfortable.
If we're measuring by minute, though, the next unit up is 2 miles per minute, or 120 miles per hour. This is not comfortable. 80 mph is 1.33333 miles per minute, and nobody likes fractions. | [
"Speed is the change in distance to an object with respect to time. Thus the existing system for measuring distance, combined with a memory capacity to see where the target last was, is enough to measure speed. At one time the memory consisted of a user making grease pencil marks on the radar screen and then calcul... |
Can anyone help me identify this substance I found in my yard? | If it looks and smells like bee's wax it might be make by ground dwelling bees. We have them here in S. Texas. They are about the size of the end of your thumb to the first joint and, although they are slow to get aroused, when they do you might want to be someplace else. They make a kind of honey which is often in the form of 2 black balls and not the usual flat honey shape. | [
"Hygroscopic substances include cellulose fibers (such as cotton and paper), sugar, caramel, honey, glycerol, ethanol, wood, methanol, sulfuric acid, many fertilizer chemicals, many salts (like calcium chloride, bases like sodium hydroxide etc.), and a wide variety of other substances.\n",
"Alamosite (PbSiO) is a... |
what is the point of those "fowarding you to your download in 5.." pages | They basically either make you look at ads, or are there to convince you into paying for a premium service.
There's a *slight* chance that they're actually load-balancing and just want you to have something to look at so you don't think it's frozen and hit reload constantly, too. | [
"Is important to remember that while RetroShare’s encryption makes it virtually impossible for an ISP or another external observer to know what one is downloading or uploading, this limitation does not apply to members of the user's RetroShare circle of trust; adding the wrong people to it is a potential risk.\n",
... |
When an object moves, how quickly does the change in direction of its gravitational field spread? | Two things could happen.
In your scenario, if the object were magically teleported away, the other object would only observe the change in gravitational effect after the signal reaches it. That means that if it's 10 light years away, object B would only notice the object A moving away 10 years later.
In reality, a much more exciting thing happens. If you have two objects that are gravitationally interacting such as the Earth and the sun, the above doesn't happen. The sun is 8 light minutes away from Earth. Following the first explanation, you would expect the Earth to be orbiting around the spot where the sun was 8 minutes ago. In reality, the Earth is orbiting where the sun is *right now*.
You may ask how this is possible since I told you changes in a gravitational field travel at the speed of light. The reason is that the momentum of the system is encoded within the gravitational field, giving the overall effect of seemingly instantaneous propagation of gravity. | [
"Since the object's velocity vector is constantly changing direction, the moving object is undergoing acceleration by a centripetal force in the direction of the center of rotation. Without this acceleration, the object would move in a straight line, according to Newton's laws of motion.\n",
"The gravitational fo... |
Our ears are so sensitive, that we can ear someone murmur from a few meters in a quiet room. How come the wind doesn't render us deaf ? | You have 2 muscles which attach to the conductive bones in your ear. The stapedius muscle attaches to the stapes (stirrup) and the tensor tympani attaches to the malleus (hammer).
Contraction of these muscles prevent the bones from vibrating as much and thus makes sounds less loud. You have two reflexes that contract these muscles during loud noise and while you are talking. This is partly why listening to a recording of your own voice sounds weird.
These two muscles are also innervated by different cranial nerves and problems with these nerves will result in experiencing excessively loud noises or apparent changes in one's voice. | [
"The human ear can generally hear sounds with frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz (the audio range). Sounds outside this range are considered infrasound (below 20 Hz) or ultrasound (above 20 kHz) Although hearing requires an intact and functioning auditory portion of the central nervous system as well as a working... |
if the fdic ensures 250k, how do billionaires organize so much money? | They spread it out over many banks. They also have a ton of assets that simply aren't FDIC insured. The FDIC isn't designed to protect the money of billionaires. The purpose of the program is to prevent bank runs in times of desperation. | [
"The foundation has funded a wide range of interventions, many controversial, including Oregon's open primary ballot, Planned Parenthood, the Guttmacher Institute, the Network of Abortion Funds, the Center of Reproductive Rights, education reform, efforts to end public pensions, a data-first approach to criminal ju... |
"There may only be one electron in the whole Universe"? | It was casually suggested by John Wheeler in 1940. You shouldn't think of it as a serious idea.
The idea is that there's one single electron moving back and forth in time. The positron is when the electron is moving backwards in time. In fact, a positron does look like an electron in the opposite direction of time. However, it also makes the prediction that there's an equal number of electrons and positrons, which appears to be incorrect.
| [
"The electron is a subatomic particle, symbol or , whose electric charge is negative one elementary charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure. The electron has a mass that... |
what is the little metal piece that coaches press against a boxers cuts? | It's suppose to reduce swelling. It's cold and absorbs body heat quickly. | [
"Aspiring boxers undergo years of apprenticeship, toughening their fists against stone and other hard surfaces, until they are able to break coconuts and rocks with their bare hands. Any part of the body may be targeted, except the groin, but the prime targets are the head and chest. Techniques incorporate punches,... |
what makes md5 such a bad hashing algorithm? | A couple of things:
1) It's very fast. "How is that a disadvantage?" you may ask. Don't we want computers to be fast? Well, not in this case. For one, you don't need the speed. If your login takes 500 ms instead of 0.5 ms because of a slow hash function, you don't really mind. On the other hand, being able to calculate a billion MD5 hashes per second instead of ten thousand increases the speed of brute force attacks significantly, making your hashes less secure.
This is bad in it's own right, but it doesn't even matter with MD5, because
2) It's susceptible to so called "collision attacks". A collision attack operates on a simple principle: since a hash function produces a fixed length output from variable length input, there will be multiple inputs with the same hash. If I can craft my own input with the expected hash, I can pass of forged things as valid.
By their nature, all hash functions have collisions, but for *good* hash functions finding these collisions should be no easier than just guessing. For MD5, it is *significantly* easier, making it broken by today's metrics. | [
"The MD5 message-digest algorithm is a widely used hash function producing a 128-bit hash value. Although MD5 was initially designed to be used as a cryptographic hash function, it has been found to suffer from extensive vulnerabilities. It can still be used as a checksum to verify data integrity, but only against ... |
Could a planetary system be close enough to a nebula so as to have "nebula-lit night sky?" | The most dramatic nebula images you generally see are those of [molecular clouds](_URL_0_). These are star forming regions, which will form stars and planets. However, much of the gas is dissipated within 10s of millions of years by the radiation and winds from big bright short-lived stars, which is barely enough time to maybe have some planets form.
But, in principle, there's no reason why a planet couldn't coincidentally happen to be near a molecular cloud, or even another nebula like a [planetary nebula](_URL_1_).
However, the view will not be all that impressive. Nebulae are very thin and dim, and are only really visible because we use telescopes with very large collecting areas and very long exposure times. To a human eye, a nebula is just a faint grey-white cloud. It might look cool from a very dark area on Earth with excellent visibility, but from a town it would just look like the stars are a little bit dimmer than they would be otherwise. | [
"When stars like the Sun are near end of life, they send their outer layers into space to create glowing clouds of gas, a planetary nebulae. This ejection of mass is uneven, and planetary nebulae can have complex shapes. NGC 6818 shows knotty filament-like structures and distinct layers of material, with a bright a... |
Curious question about female ovulation | EDIT: Mostly outside my area of expertise, don't trust my tag too much.
The only reason a biology teacher should feel awkward being asked this question is if they don't know the answer and aren't willing to help you find someone or a source that does.
So the menstrual cycle is generated by a complex interaction between the hypothalamus, anterior pituitary, uterus, and ovaries. The ineraction involves many positive and negative feedbacks and involves hormonal changes through the whole body. [Wikipedia covers these interactions well.](_URL_1_) So the answer to the first question is no, there are not two cycles running independently in the body, both ovaries play a role.
It is completely random which ovary drops an egg. [Source](_URL_0_) Interestingly (TIL) that if both ovaries release at once and both eggs are fertilized, you get fraternal twins. (I presume the release of egg from one ovary usually inhibits the other but I don't know for sure)
All women have different cycle lengths, the so called- 30 day cycle is not all that common. Certain dietary and behavioral changes can alter a woman's cycle. Some women have very few cycles. It used to be believed that women living together would 'cycle together' it turns out this is likely just a statistical error.
Losing an ovary does not change your cycle as each ovary will kick out an egg until inhibited by the other, no inhibition from the other side just means one side is always the ovulating side. | [
"The start of ovulation can be detected by signs. Because the signs are not readily discernible by people other than the female, humans are said to have a concealed ovulation. In many animal species there are distinctive signals indicating the period when the female is fertile. Several explanations have been propos... |
Why weren't air rifles more widely used in the American Civil War? | Can you elaborate? | [
"During the American Civil War, an assortment of small arms found their way onto the battlefield. Though the muzzle-loading percussion cap rifle was the most numerous weapon, being standard-issue forth the Union and Confederate armies, many other firearms, ranging from the single shot breech-loading Sharps and Burn... |
When an electrical flow is traveling down a metal wire, what is going on at the atomic level? | Electrical current is the "pushing" of electrons on each other. You can think of it as electrons being pulled from one atom, jumping to the next, and being replaced by those in line behind them to create a cycle. This is why electrical current only flows in a *circuit*, or a complete loop for the electrons to circulate in. They can't move into a "dead end", say a piece of wire sticking out of one terminal in a battery, because the electrons in the wire can't move.
One distinction that is important is the actual velocity of the electrons vs. the propagation of the current. Electrical current propagates at approximately 2.99 x 10^8 m/s, which is also the speed of light. (Light is a wave on the EM spectrum, and all electromagnetic waves propagate at the same speed.) However, electrons themselves move extremely slowly down the conductor, at a rate referred to as the *Drift Speed*. The electrons are actually moving very fast, but they are bouncing around and moving in directions other than the true flow of the current.
Another thing you will notice if you explore this topic further is the difference between true current flow and the standard in electrical engineering. When Benjamin Franklin was investigating electricity, he decided to model current flow as the flow of positive charge through conductors. Positive charges repel, so current was conventionally assumed to flow out of the positive terminal of a battery, through the circuit, and into the negative terminal. The Negativity/Positivity of charge is entirely arbitrary, but in modern physics we have assigned a charge of -1 to electrons, +1 to protons, and zero to neutrons. Since electric current flow is the movement of *electrons*, technically current "flows" negative to positive. This will never come up when you are constructing everyday circuits or solving problems, but it can be a stumbling block for beginners so make sure you remember that current is actually the flow of electrons from negative to positive, but is conventionally the flow of positive charge from positive to negative.
| [
"When high voltage is applied to the gap, a spark forms across the bottom of the wires where they are nearest each other, rapidly changing to an electric arc. Air breaks down at about 30 kV/cm, depending on humidity, temperature, etc. Apart from the anode and cathode voltage drops, the arc behaves almost as a short... |
Was "boiling oil" ever regularly used in siege warfare, or is this a myth, or something that only happened a few times? | From the point of view of European medieval siege warfare, there are instances of a whole host of things being thrown by defenders over walls, through machicolations and down murder holes, or via siege engines by attackers. These include everything from rocks and pitch, to waste and effluent, to human corpses and animal parts. Considering that chroniclers were not very interested in recording all details of all sieges, we are left with a patchwork of insights. The other sources are manuscript images, some bas relief sculpture and other artworks, themselves a patchwork. So, one couldn't simply say "it's a myth" or "it's true".
What the chronicles and artworks do give us a sense of is the amount of tactical preparedness *and improvisation* that went on in siege warfare. The best for this, from early to late medieval, are the following, all making tremendous use of primary sources that you can refer back to:
* Bradbury, Jim. *The Medieval Siege* (Boydell & Brewer, 1992)
* Purton, Peter Fraser. *A History of the Early Medieval Siege, C. 450-1220* (Boydell & Brewer, 2009)
* Purton, Peter Fraser. *A History of the Late Medieval Siege, 1200-1500* (Boydell & Brewer, 2010)
Neither of these authors give credence to 'vats of oil' poured over the walls, generally because of
1. expense/availability,
2. logistical difficulty of getting and handling large quantities of heated oil on the parapets, and,
3. tactical ineffectiveness except *perhaps* against mining cats and mantelets.
However a small pot of hot oil would be very, very effective through a murder hole or machicolation, which Bradbury in particular found some evidence of. | [
"Due to the chemical characteristics of petroleum that it continues to burn in water, it was widely used by feudal militaries. Some examples include the defense of the city of Jiuquan in Gansu Province in the year 578 against the invading Göktürk army, in which the defenders used petroleum to ignite and destroy the... |
Would the Superconducting Super Collider, that was cancelled have been a huge science gain over the LHC? | It would have had about three times the energy: 40 TeV total vs 14. That means that it would have gotten the same results faster (look at how fast the LHC found what the Tevatron spent years looking for) and would have had a better chance at finding new physics like supersymmetry. | [
"Planning for a new powerful collider to explore new physics at the 1 TeV scale had already started in 1983. The Superconducting Super Collider was to accelerate protons in an underground circular tunnel just outside Dallas, Texas to energies of each. One of the primary goals of this megaproject was finding the Hig... |
why do many high-education-required jobs pay less than low-education-required counterparts? | It really depends on the details, you'd need to be more specific. A trade skill can be quite valuable if it's in demand and doesn't require a degree, so probably plumbers with no degree make more money on average than people with many kinds of humanities degrees. But on average across the whole population, people with degrees make more money than people without degrees. | [
"People with higher education have always tended to have higher salaries and less unemployment than people with less education. However, the type of degree has a large impact on future earnings. Average annual earnings range from $27,000 for high school dropouts to $80,000 for those with a graduate degree. Undergra... |
Does it save energy to turn down your furnace (or
AC) during the day? | The answer relates to [Newton's Law of Cooling](_URL_0_). To calculate how much heat leaked out of (or into) a house, you only need to know the *average temperature difference* between the inside and outside. So we have two scenarios:
Tracy Wastrel leaves the house for some interval, and leaves the thermostat untouched. The furnace works while she is gone to maintain room temperature.
Sally Smartie leaves the house for some interval, and turns the thermostat down. The house cools down toward outdoor temperature, and warms up when she returns.
Since thermostats work to counteract heat leakage, we know that the average temperature of Sally's house was closer to ambient than the average temperature of Tracy's house. So by Newton's Law of Cooling, we know that less heat leaked out of Sally's house than Tracy's house.
Now here's the kicker: **Since the final temperatures are the same, the amount of heat added is equal to the amount of heat that leaked out.** Therefore we can conclude that it *never* uses more energy to warm the building up than you saved.
**edit:** If it's good advice for furnaces, it's even better advice for air-con. Because air-conditioners pump heat outside, the energy use is a function of the *square* of the temperature difference (twice as much heat leaks in, *and* the air-con works twice as hard).
TL;DR less heat leaked out, so there's less heat needs to put back | [
"When a solar thermal storage plant is forced to idle due to lack of sunlight locally during cloudy days, it is possible to consume the cheap excess infirm power from solar PV, wind and hydro power plants (similar to a lesser efficient, huge capacity and low cost battery storage system) by heating the hot molten sa... |
why are bogs so good at preserving organic material? | The broad answer: loss of sunlight and oxygen (due to excess pigmented and colloidal organic material), low pH, (due to organic acids, especially humic acids), and low N, K, and P content (bogs are usually relatively upland, and away from volcanic soils or metamorphic mineral soils). Corrections to my description are welcome. | [
"Anaerobic acidic sphagnum bogs have low rates of decay, and hence preserve plant fragments and pollen to allow reconstruction of past environments. They even preserve human bodies for millennia; examples of these preserved specimens are Tollund Man, Haraldskær Woman, Clonycavan Man and Lindow Man. Such bogs can al... |
why isn't the female condom more popular? | They're difficult to wear, less attractive to look at, and they're more failure prone than male.condoms. They also get in the way during sex as you have a plastic supporting ring hanging outside the vagina.
Horrid devices. There's nothing less sexy. | [
"The female condom was developed in the late 20th century (male condoms have been used for centuries). A primary motive for its creation is the well-documented refusal of some men to use a condom because of loss of sensation and the resulting impact on the hardness of the man's erection, and secondarily by its impl... |
how are the children of illegal immigrants in the us (who, therefore, are also illegal) able to attend high schools and universities? | Public schools generally only require that you list your place of residence and you arrange for transportation, whether by school bus route or personally picking up or dropping off. Most school districts don't check citizenship because it's never been an issue.
Colleges just don't care about citizenship. They only look at high school grades, financials if you apply for loans, and extracurricular activities for applicants.
Bottom line: no one checks. | [
"Another example includes undocumented students, immigrants to the United States, and people who look like immigrants. Regarding undocumented students, this refers to children born in the United States to parents who had illegally entered the U.S These students are actual U.S. citizens, but have been in danger of e... |
Why does a space shuttle do a quarter turn 15-30 seconds into launch? Why not just launch it with that orientation rather than turning? | Excellent question!
The roll program is executed around T+12 to orient the shuttle into a heads down attitude to reduce structural loading, gain downrange velocity, and provide a easier abort maneuver setup.
The roll program is a combined roll, yaw and pitch maneuver. I think your question is mainly about the roll and yaw portions of the maneuver. The pitch maneuver brings the nose around with the belly up, points it downrange and gives the trajectory that arc shape.
So, why does the shuttle need to roll and yaw? Because the launch pad has a fixed orientation, but the shuttle orbits at various inclinations (angle relative to the equator) depending on the mission. A typical inclination of 28 degrees takes advantage of the earth's rotation for lifting heavy payloads. Space station missions are flown at a 52 degree inclination. So, since the pad is fixed, the roll program is necessary to orient the shuttle to the correct orbital inclination.
So, why didn't they just pick the most likely inclination and orient the launch pad accordingly; thereby only needing to execute the pitch portion of the program for most missions? This is the answer I didn't know and had to dig for. Apparently the launch pads are leftovers from the Apollo program and the access tower and support structures are oriented as they were for the Saturn V rockets. Also, the shuttle straddles two leftover flame trenches, one for the boosters and one for the main engines, which also dictate the shuttle's launch orientation.
Edit: Fixed the time of the roll program. | [
"The system had some unique features including an intended two-week turn-around time (for the original Space Shuttle launch turn-around time) and the roll-on-roll-off for loading in aircraft (Earth-transportation).\n",
"One of the small rocket engines which help control the pointing of the Shuttle was turned off ... |
If light is produced by the release of photons when electrons return to stable energy levels, why do blackbody objects emit light over a continuous and wide spectrum? | Charged particles emit a (quasi-)discrete spectrum of EM radiation when they transition between *bound* states, but they can also emit continuous spectra when they transition between *scattering* states.
This is what bremsstrahlung is, and that's ultimately what causes the continuous Planck spectrum of a black body. | [
"The photons of a light beam have a characteristic energy which is proportional to the frequency of the light. In the photoemission process, if an electron within some material absorbs the energy of one photon and acquires more energy than the work function (the electron binding energy) of the material, it is eject... |
If time dilation increases exponentially as an object approaches a black hole's event horizon, how does anything ever reach the singularity? | Well, the key point is that time passes differently for different observers. So yes, someone looking from far away would see everything quickly redshift and essentially become frozen and dark right on the surface of the black hole (at least until it evaporates).
But from the perspective of whatever is falling into the black hole, time passes normally, and things take a finite amount of proper time (that is, time as measured by them) to reach the singularity. | [
"The increase in the time coordinate to infinity as one approaches the event horizon is why information could never be received back from any probe that is sent through such an event horizon. This is despite the fact that the probe itself can nonetheless travel past the horizon. It is also why the space-time metric... |
- the dot com crash | When the internet was first becoming popular and a mainstay in most homes, tons of ".com" companies were being started. For instance, I remember _URL_0_ being a Company that would deliver groceries to your door after you ordered online. Anyway, tons of these startups were being established, going public, which led to a boost in the economy/stock market. The "crash" is those Companies either failing due to oversaturation of internet startups, or just the realization that their idea was flawed. Everyone tries to sell/dump the stock which turns the stock market/economy to shit (compared to what it used to be, at least). | [
"The Nasdaq Composite stock market index, which included many Internet-based companies, peaked in value on March 10, 2000, before crashing. The burst of the bubble, known as the dot-com crash, lasted from March 11, 2000, to October 9, 2004. During the crash, many online shopping companies, such as Pets.com, Webvan,... |
who or what determines a day to be "national 'whatever' day!" that i see on facebook and listen on the radio every day? | Marketing departments of parties with a vested interest. National Chocolate Day will be promoted by the International Association of Chocolate Manufacturers etc. etc. There's nothing 'official' about it. You can declare any day to be anything and just shout about it on social media. | [
"The aim of the event is to “raise a greater, national awareness of the many college and high school radio stations that operate in North America by encouraging people who would not normally listen to college radio to do so on this day.” This first event had over 360 participating college and high school radio stat... |
in places where water is scarce, could a dehumidifier collect water from the air that would be potable? | Yes. It's called an atmospheric water generator. The cost is that it uses a substantial amount of energy. | [
"Many portable dehumidifiers can also be adapted to connect the condensate drip output directly to a drain via a hose. Some dehumidifier models can tie into plumbing drains or use a built-in water pump to empty themselves as they collect moisture. Alternatively, a separate condensate pump may be used to move collec... |
why are millennials so obsessed with college and graduate school? | Because your boomer parents were, back when college and grad school were both affordable and afforded advantages | [
"The College Board, the National Youth Leadership Council, and other youth-serving organizations suggest that there are many ways schools can help young people make the most of their senior year instead of succumbing to the temptation to take it easy once graduation is assured. Giving young people opportunities to ... |
bank of canada interest rate: why do they raise it, why is it good to raise it (and who for), and why can’t they leave it at 0%? | In general, low interest rates help boost the economy because it becomes cheaper to borrow money, which businesses can use to make investments in their business. Consumers can buy homes and other things cheaply. But there is no such thing as a free lunch, low interest rates accelerate the rate of inflation, and can potentially grow the economy too fast making it likely a correction, recession or depression will occur.
Higher interest rates help slow the economy down by reducing borrowing because now borrowing has become more expensive. A business might be willing to borrow money for a high risk venture when interest rates are low, but might be more cautious when borrowing is expensive. A slowing economy can potentially lead to higher unemployment rates, and a lower rate of inflation, potentially even deflation.
The goal of most central banks is to balance between growing the economy at a steady pace while keeping inflation at a low predictable rate.
If the central bank's interest rate is 0, the bank can't lower interest rates to help jump start the economy, borrowing is already free. It can't fight inflation with a 0 rate either. So your central bank most likely felt the economy was strong enough that they needed to start raising it.
Gradual growing and slowing of the economy is generally preferred over a strong boom/bust cycle.
| [
"On December 9, the Bank of Canada lowered its key interest rate by 0.75% to 1.5%, the lowest it had been since 1958; at the same time the Bank officially announced that Canada's economy was in recession. This move came after the news that Canada lost 70,600 jobs in the month of November, the most since 1982. The o... |
what's happening on a biological level when my hair sticks up and i can't get it to go down? | It's nothing biological. It could be sticking up for a number of reasons, one of which is static electricity. Static electricity comes about when there is an imbalance of positively charged and negatively charged atoms in a system (the system in this case being your hair). When your hair is charged, it will want to spread out away from all the other charged hairs, so it will end up sticking up.
Water helps bring it down because it makes the hair heavier, thus able to resist the force of static electricity more.
Water makes it worse right before bed because it will tend to stick in the same position in which it dries, which is usually a weird position when you are sleeping.
Hope this answered your question! | [
"Hair growth begins inside the hair follicle. The only \"living\" portion of the hair is found in the follicle. The hair that is visible is the hair shaft, which exhibits no biochemical activity and is considered \"dead\". The base of a hair's root (the \"bulb\") contains the cells that produce the hair shaft. Othe... |
what are the advantages (and disadvantages) of animals having larger males vs larger females? | It varies from species to species really. With lions, a single male keeps a pride of females and he is the only one to mate with them. Male lions grow very big because they are essentially brawlers. When a male lion wants to mate, he'll have to fight and beat a pride leader to take over his pride. If a male lion has a pride, he'll have to defend it from all other male lions. So they evolved to be very large for these fights.
The deep sea is a very dark and lonely place. There is very little nutrition down there so animals tend to be spread out over a vast cold pitch black desert. It can be difficult to find a partner to mate with down there. Angler fish solved this problem by having large females and tiny males. When a male actually finds a female, he bites her to hold on. Over time, the male fuses with the female and obtains it's nutrition from her bloodstream. Eventually the male shrivels until he's hardly more than a pair of testicles hanging from the female to provide her with sperm when needed. That way the female never has to go looking for a mate again.
In many bird species, males are brightly coloured while females are drab shades of brown. The male needs to show off his fitness by demonstrating that he can produce glorious plumage and still survive while being so conspicuous. The female on the other hand needs to sit on her nest and brood on her eggs, she needs to be small and well camouflaged.
In many invertebrate species like spiders, the females are larger to be able to better handle the physical demands of producing hundreds or even thousands of eggs.
Anyway as you can see, there is no single reason why males or females grow larger. | [
"There are cases where males are substantially larger than females. An example is \"Lamprologus callipterus\", a type of cichlid fish. In this fish, the males are characterized as being up to 60 times larger than the females. The male's increased size is believed to be advantageous because males collect and defend ... |
How unique are individual animals of the same species? | > There is also a great variety amongst humans that is not typically found in other species.
That's just because you don't notice the difference in other species as much as you do in humans. It's "all Asians look the same" syndrome. | [
"In essential structural characteristics, as well as in general appearance and habits, all the animals of this genus very closely resemble each other, so whether they should be considered as belonging to one, two, or more species is a matter of controversy among naturalists.\n",
"Some species are more distinct th... |
what the is escrow and what does it mean if my mortgage has an escrow shortage? | Escrow is a source of funds held by a neutral 3rd party... in the case of your mortgage, it's money you pay as part of your monthly mortgage that's held to pay property taxes (typically paid twice a year) and homeowners insurance (paid annually).
If you have an escrow shortage, then it likely means that the monthly amount you've been paying into the escrow is less than the upcoming payment from that account will be... ie. if your property taxes have gone up but the monthly payments haven't been adjusted to reflect the increase (something I will personally be dealing with). | [
"In the U.S., escrow payment is a common term referring to the portion of a mortgage payment that is designated to pay for real property taxes and hazard insurance. It is an amount \"over and above\" the principal and interest portion of a mortgage payment. Since the escrow payment is used to pay taxes and insuranc... |
if i can water down a drink (soda, gatorade, "juice") and it's still brightly coloured, why did the manufacture add so much colouring to begin with? | The point of the dye is to change the color from something that is probably grotesque/unappealing, to something more matching our expectations based on described flavor. So let's say your cherry drink is really blue, with all of the chemicals in it, before coloring. you add a heap of red, but it doesn't change much. you add a few more heaps of red, and all of a sudden it's purple, not really what you want either, so you keep adding heaps of red until you've finally gotten a red drink. So now you go and add a little bit of water to a little bit of the total drink made, and you will reduce the vibrancy of the drink, but if they added less red to begin with, they'd end up with a different color entirely | [
"The Hi-C products used to be the color implied by their flavor, but in 2002, Hi-C juice boxes was re-introduced as a yellowish clear beverage that would not stain clothing. Thus, flavors like Shoutin' Orange Tangergreen lost their distinctive colors. The soda fountain versions of Fruit Punch, Poppin' Pink Lemonade... |
Physics debate on Kennedy Assassination | From the hearings:
Excerpts from testimony of Alfred G. Olivier, DVM to Rockefeller Commission, April 18, 1975. Transcript of testimony taken beginning at page 21 of the testimony. Dr. Olivier, (A.) a wound ballistics scientist, is being questioned by Robert Olsen. (Q.)
Q. What is your opinion, based upon the expertise that you have acquired in these 18 years at the Edgewood Arsenal in wound ballistics, with respect to the question of the direction from which the bullet came that struck the President in the head?
A. Well, the President in 313, the head appears to have moved slightly forward from the previous frame. Now, I say appears, because unless you measured this precisely you don't know. But it appears to have moved slightly.
And this would not be inconsistent with the momentum of the bullet being transferred to the head. Whereas I said a bullet cannot knock a person down or move a body in any violent way, it could conceivably move the head a little bit. We fired at human skulls filled with gelatin sitting on the table, and they would roll off the table. And this apparent side movement of the head is in the correct direction if the bullet came from the book depository.
Q. That is, from the rear of the President?
A. From the rear of the President.
Q. Now, then, what can you tell us with respect to the subsequent action of the President's head and body after that initial apparent slight movement forward?
A. There could be two reasons for it. One reason, there is a jet of blood and brain material from the head, some bone seemed to fly up in the air, but the bulk of it appears to fly forward and maybe slightly to the right. This gives an indication that that is possibly in the direction that the bullet exited from the skull.
Q. Now, was there any movement of the President's head and body associated with that?
A. That material going in that direction would have a tendency as a result of this jet effect to push the head in the other direction. This was demonstrated by Louis Alvarez in California several years ago by shooting melons. When you could get a jet of honeydew melon going out the front, the melon would roll toward the gun, showing that there is some movement from this jet effect.
Q. That also a moderate movement?
A. That would be moderate, yes. Now, most of the movement you see of the President moving backwards and his body moving sideward I believe is a neuromuscular reaction.
Another factor that could be involved is acceleration of the car. I have no idea of when the car started to accelerate. But at any rate, it is typical of animals or humans struck on the head to have a violent muscular reaction to it. And this is what is appears to me. Certainly the bullet didn't knock him backwards and sideways. This was, I think a neuromuscular reaction. | [
"In \"Killing Kennedy\" the authors narrate the events leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy as well as the event's aftermath. O'Reilly and Dugard also focus on the element of the growing Cold War, Kennedy's attempt to deal with the rise of Communism, and the potential threat from organized crime.\n"... |
Since all the plates are constanly moving, will there ever be a time where the continents will move into eachother and form a new supercontinent? | Yes. The exact arrangement of the next supercontinent is debated, with layouts such as "Amasia" and "Pangea Ultima" proposed, depending mainly on whether subduction zones form at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean or not. But another supercontinent of some sort is very likely in future.
And yes, rifting can split a plate in two. Africa and South America were once one continent on one plate. In the current era, East Africa is in the process of splitting off from the rest of the continent. | [
"The movement of plates has caused the formation and break-up of continents over time, including occasional formation of a supercontinent that contains most or all of the continents. The supercontinent Columbia or Nuna formed during a period of and broke up about . The supercontinent Rodinia is thought to have form... |
Did any of Leonardo Da Vinci's research actually lead to technological advancement, or was it all lost until it became irrelevant? | I actually wrote a paper on this last year, which allows me the delicious pretentiousness of quoting myself.
**TL;DR:** His rediscovered papers helped design a surgical robot in the late 1990s, and improved a specific type of heart surgery in the early 2000s. (**Edit:** And, as others have pointed out, not much else.)
**On the subject of Leonardo's research being lost until too late, for those unfamiliar:**
Upon Leonardo's death in 1519, his student Melzi took possession of his notes but the dense content proved impossible to prepare for publication. No small part of the blame here may be laid at the doorstep of the master himself, for Leonardo’s style was difficult at best.
He is well-known for his “mirrored” handwriting, with the notes moving from right to left across the page, but that was only the first layer of the problem. He used no punctuation, invented his own shorthand as well as compounding and dividing words at apparent random, and even formed letters of the alphabet in his own personal way. Oftentimes he eschewed the written word completely in favor of multi-page sequences of hand-drawn images, which like his writing ran backwards from right to left.
And of course the knowledge contained within this labyrinthine set of documentation was revolutionary for the time: in scientific terms only a few others on the planet would have been able to follow along Leonardo’s path of analysis with true understanding and comprehension, and even thirty years after Leonardo’s death the scholar Vasari referred to him as heretical.
It would have taken a unique person to decipher Leonardo’s notes, make sense of the findings within, organize and compile them into something suitable for publication, and then have the bravery to publish in an inimical political and religious climate—and perhaps in the end there was no one better suited to accomplish this than Leonardo himself. Our best hope at the time was the aforementioned student, Francesco Melzi, who made a valiant attempt but found himself adrift in the eighteen volumes of notes Leonardo left him. Even with two assistants to help process the deluge and forty years of effort, he was overwhelmed, and upon his death in 1568 the studies ended up passing from person to person throughout the centuries, never fully appreciated or understood, until finally being published in 1900 after the surviving folios made their way to London and the Royal Collection.
Their significance was immediately recognized, but “by then, their power to affect the progress of anatomical knowledge had long passed.”
**On the subject of whether or not any of it is still useful:**
One of Leonardo's modern-day proponents is a British heart surgeon, Francis Wells. Doctor Wells specializes in mitral valve repair operations. Typically, this type of repair is accomplished by narrowing the valve’s diameter to restrict backflow, but after studying Leonardo’s anatomical analyses of the heart, the surgeon discovered there was a better way, thanks to Leonardo’s identification of the opening phase of the valve’s movement as crucial to the overall cycle. With this new knowledge, Doctor Wells has modified his mitral valve repair procedures and successfully treated 80 patients (**Edit:** /u/ItsAConspiracy found a [more recent source](_URL_1_) upping this number to 2,000+), restoring them to a quality of life previously not possible. He suggests, “Leonardo had a depth of appreciation of the anatomy and physiology of the body—its structure and function—that perhaps has been overlooked by some,” and is studying the rest of Leonardo’s anatomical work in hopes of finding other refinements to modern procedures.
Even more compelling is Leonardo’s influence on the cutting edge of modern medicine—the development of precision robots to assist in surgical procedures. Leonardo himself, despite his prescience in so many other technological areas, may have been surprised to learn that since 1983, some surgeries have been accomplished with robotic tools. There is some reason to think Leonardo may have anticipated this eventuality, however; in 1495, Leonardo designed and built one of the first humanoid robots, a mechanical knight capable of sitting up, turning his head, and waving his arms, all in time to the sounds of artificial drums. When modern-day robotics expert Mark Rosenheim set out to duplicate this robot, it took him five years of work, and in his research he discovered:
> Leonardo’s anatomical drawings were unique and gave him the information needed to emulate the complex joints and muscles of the human body. The wrist joint, which is one of the body’s most complicated joints, presented challenges to robot design. However, Leonardo’s principles enabled engineers to construct a suitable model. It is from these and other experiments that the first prototype for robotic surgery was developed.
And so in 1998, the first da Vinci robot-assisted surgery, a heart bypass, was performed, inaugurating a career for the telepresence tool that has resulted in over 200,000 surgeries performed by a robot designed in part with the help of Leonardo’s anatomical studies. Each of these procedures was safer, faster, and less invasive compared to the non-robotically-assisted alternative, and each patient has Leonardo’s work to thank for their speedy and comfortable recovery. As of 2009, there are over 1,600 da Vinci robots installed worldwide, performing minimally-invasive laparoscopic surgeries to treat heart, prostate, kidney, bladder, and testicular issues, from malignant tumor removal to complete organ transplant.
**Sources**
Keele, Kenneth D., “Leonardo da Vinci’s Influence on Renaissance Anatomy,” Medical History 8, no. 4 (1964): 362, doi:10.1017/S0025727300029835
Clayton, Martin, "Medicine: Leonardo's anatomy years," Nature 484, no. 7394 (April 19, 2012): 314, doi:10.1038/484314a
Da Vinci clue for heart surgeon, BBC News, last modified September 28, 2005, _URL_0_
Yates, David R., Christophe Vaessen, and Morgan Roupret, "From Leonardo to da Vinci: the history of robot-assisted surgery in urology," BJU International 108, no. 11 (December 2011): 1708-1713, doi: 10.1111/j.1464-410X.2011.10576.x
A. R. Rao, et al, "Leonardo da Vinci and His Contribution to Medicine and Urology," Auanews 14, no. 5 (May 2009): 25-26, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.
**Edit:** Corrected a typo in a year-old paper. Sigh. | [
"While the full extent of his scientific studies has only become recognized in the last 150 years, he was, during his lifetime, employed for his engineering and skill of invention. Many of his designs, such as the movable dikes to protect Venice from invasion, proved too costly or impractical. Some of his smaller i... |
how are subtitles created for films? | You give someone the film and a copy of the script, and they type out the subtitles/CC. It's a lot of work, I've done it for a few 10min videos on YouTube and it took hours. However, YouTube can auto-generate captions and you can edit those, which drastically reduces the time required, but it still takes a while.
This is why the subtitles/CC are sometimes slightly different for a few lines, the person typing them out just used the script and when films the actor slightly changed the line by mistake and ge director though it was minor enough that it didn't require a re-shoot. | [
"In Bulgaria, television series are dubbed, but most television channels use subtitles for action and drama movies. AXN uses subtitles for its series, but as of 2008 emphasizes dubbing. Only Diema channels dub all programs. Movies in theaters, with the exception of films for children, use dubbing and subtitles. Dub... |
the relationship between pressure and density in a fluid. | Because barometers measure pressure, so it makes sense to use the most direct qualifier to describe the air, instead of putting it through an unnecessary conversion. | [
"Gas is compressible and the density changes significantly with changes in pressure. Liquids, on the other hand, are considered to be incompressible and so their density does not tend to change with a change in pressure. If the pressure of a wet gas system increases, the density of the gas will increase but the den... |
Armistice was 11 o'clock on the 11th of November. How widespread (immediate) among the trenches was this, and is there any evidence that commanders ordered unnecessary assaults? | The armstice was actually reached at 5am in the morning that day, to be enacted at 11am. So there was a 6 hour delay to allow the implementation of the truce. The armstice was announced in Paris at 9am, and in London around 10:20 am. Allied artillery continue to fire on the Germans even after the truce was announced, so that they would be in better positions should the fighting restart.
The last soldiers killed were, as per the wikipedia article:
> > Augustin Trébuchon was the last Frenchman to die when he was shot on his way to tell fellow soldiers that hot soup would be served after the ceasefire. He was killed at 10:45 am. The last soldier from the UK to die, George Edwin Ellison of the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, was killed earlier that morning at around 9:30 am while scouting on the outskirts of Mons, Belgium. The final Canadian, and Commonwealth, soldier to die, Private George Lawrence Price, was shot and killed by a sniper just two minutes before the armistice to the north of Mons at 10:58 am, to be recognized as one of the last killed with a monument to his name. And finally, American Henry Gunther is generally recognized as the last soldier killed in action in World War I. He was killed 60 seconds before the armistice came into force while charging astonished German troops who were aware the Armistice was nearly upon them. | [
"Armistice Day is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France at 5:45 am, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the \"eleventh hour of the ele... |
Can you approach a black hole from any dimension and experience the same result? | What do you mean from any dimension? Do you mean from any direction?
If the black hole isn't spinning very fast then yes. If it's spinning fast enough it depends on your direction relative to its equator. | [
"If our massive object is in fact a (nonrotating) black hole, we probably wish to follow the experience of the Lemaître observers as they fall through the event horizon at formula_71. Since the static polar spherical coordinates have a coordinate singularity at the horizon, we'll need to switch to a more appropriat... |
why does being warm make us drowsy, whereas being cold makes us alert ? | Your heart hate slows in a warm environment because it doesn't have to work as hard to keep your body warm. | [
"One explanation for the effect is a cold-induced malfunction of the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that regulates body temperature. Another explanation is that the muscles contracting peripheral blood vessels become exhausted (known as a loss of vasomotor tone) and relax, leading to a sudden surge of blood (a... |
how can a scratched dvd sometimes work when just 1 wrong letter can crash computer codes? | Error correction routines. Essentially, they assume the disc will be scratched eventually and structure the data such that minor issues can be accounted for and dealt with. | [
"Scratched compact discs and DVDs may sometimes be repaired through buffing with a very fine compound, the principle being that a multitude of small scratches will be more optically transparent than a single large scratch. However, this does take some skill and will eventually cause the protective coating of the di... |
pythagoreanism | The sum of squares on the short sides is equal to the square on the long side in a right triangle. | [
"Pythagoreanism is the name given to the system of philosophy and science developed by Pythagoras, which influenced nearly all the systems of Hellenistic philosophy that followed. Two schools of Pythagorean thought eventually developed; one based largely on mathematics and continuing his line of scientific work, wh... |
how do companies trademark super common words/terms | Trademarks are very specific and contextual, unlike, say, copyright. A copyright protects you pretty much regardless of the context (*pretty much* but not always). But copyright requires a whole body of work. For instance, "Harry Potter" is copyrighted, but there's a whole novel there. JK Rowling can't just stamp "Harry Potter" on the cover of a book and call it a day, you can't copyright just a title. But with that copyright, you can't write a Harry Potter song, or make a Harry Potter movie, etc.
Trademarks are a lot more specific. You can trademark just short words or phrases, but your trademark only protects you as much as a *reasonable person* might be confused by similarly named products. So Apple computers is a trademark, but you could have a store that sells Apple ceiling tile installation services or whatever (assuming you didn't steal their logo or anything). As long as no reasonable person would think your Apple ceiling tile installation company is related to Apple electronics, they can't stop you. So the burden to establish ownership of the intellectual property is much lower for trademark, but the protection doesn't extend as far.
Also with trademark, you can't get ownership over a common word or phrase that anyone in the same business *has* to use. So for instance, you can't trademark Apple brand apples, because everyone selling apples has to use it. For that reason, I do not believe any company could trademark "hot" hotsauce, it's too generic. However, they *could* trademark the word "hot" in a particular font that clearly associates it with one brand.
The most important things to remember are that trademark is based on what a *reasonable consumer* would think, it's about common sense, not ridiculous ownership; and, it's a decision made by a judge, not just something you write on paper and it's done. You apply for a trademark, but you don't necessarily get it if the judge thinks it's too generic or didn't follow the other rules. And that means that if a trademark was granted, someone thought about it first and decided it made sense, they didn't just hand it out without thinking. | [
"A trademark is typically a name, word, phrase, logo, symbol, design, image, or a combination of these elements. There is also a range of non-conventional trademarks comprising marks which do not fall into these standard categories, such as those based on colour, smell, or sound (like jingles). Trademarks which are... |
Can aerosol spray cans used as flamethrowers explode at any time? | In order for a gas to ignite it needs to combine with (usually) oxygen. There is no oxygen in the can so the flame cannot backup into the can to explode.
This is the same reason a gas stove does not send the flame back down the pipes. The gas can only burn once it is in the presence of oxygen and there is none (or nearly none) in the pipes to your house.
| [
"BULLET::::- The propellants in aerosol cans are typically combinations of ignitable gases and have been known to cause fires and explosions. However, non-flammable compressed gases such as nitrogen and nitrous oxide have been widely adopted into a number of aerosol systems (such as air fresheners and aerosolized w... |
why reading strings of numbers or letters out loud helps with short term memorization | It doesn't. What you're doing is *rehearsing* which moves stuff from working/short-term memory to long-term memory. But because you're not storing it in any effective way, you'll have trouble retrieving it very shortly.
Short-term/working memory can usually hold 7 items at once (maybe 1 more, maybe 1 less), and you can't really improve it, as such.
There are tricks to help you, though - the number you referenced can easily be broken into manageable chunks - rather than remembering 13 digits, you can break it into "Six hundred eighty one / Thirty Nine / Five hundred / Five hundred / Fifty" for example - now you're only working with five items. This is, appropriately, called "chunking". | [
"Skilled readers demonstrate longer reaction times when reading aloud irregular words that do not follow spelling-sound rules compared to regular words. When an irregular word is presented, both the lexical and nonlexical pathways are activated but they generate conflicting information that takes time to be resolve... |
what happens if you try to play an instrument in space ? | An electric guitar with magnetic pickups would work in a vacuum because it does not rely on air to carry the vibration of the strings to the pickups- it senses motion of the metal strings instead.
Most other instruments would not generate any noise in space, as they almost all require air as a medium in some capacity to create sound waves.
The audio signal created would have to be played or reproduced in an atmosphere to be audible, of course. | [
"Music in space is music played in or broadcast from a spacecraft in outer space. According to the Smithsonian Institution, the first musical instruments played in outer space were an 8-note Hohner \"Little Lady\" harmonica and a handful of small bells carried by American astronauts Wally Schirra and Thomas P. Staf... |
How ISS orbit height was decided? | It all comes down to cost. Launching anything into space is very expensive and any oppertunity to safely cut cost is taken. As far as the atmospheric drag, we are talking about the indivdual atmospheric particles being meters apart from each other. To correct for this drag takes very little effort and is much cheaper than having the resupply ships go up any higher.
As for the karman line, this is a calculated altitude in which an aircraft would have to go faster than orbital velocity to support itself with aerodynamic lift. This should not be taken as the boundary of Earths atmosphere and space. | [
"Prior to the landing on May 26, 2010, the orbital altitude of the ISS was lowered by 1.5 kilometers to 345 kilometers to ensure perfect conditions for the re-entry of the Soyuz TMA-17 into the Earth's atmosphere. The orbit of the ISS was adjusted using the four engines on board the Progress M-05M spacecraft.\n",
... |
Does every chemical reaction emit a sound? | Sound is basically vibration. Vibrations that result from some source of displacement. In an abstract sense, even molecular movements like an enzyme changing its conformation create 'sound' in that when the energy resulting in the physical change is released and some of it is displaced outwardly to the environment in the form of mechanical/kinetic 'sound' waves. | [
"A chemical reaction takes place only when the reacting particles collide. However, not all collisions are effective in causing the reaction. Products are formed only when the colliding particles possess a certain minimum energy called threshold energy. As a rule of thumb, reaction rates for many reactions double f... |
if ww3 happened tomorrow, what would be the biggest difference in warfare stuff compared to ww2? | "I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth — rocks!" - [Albert Einstein](_URL_0_) | [
"Since the end of World War II, no industrial nation has fought such a large, decisive war. This is likely due to the availability of nuclear weapons, whose destructive power and quick deployment render a full mobilization of a country's resources such as in World War II logistically impractical and strategically i... |
In your opinion at point had the Roman Republic irrevocably fallen? | The Roman Republic wasn't a singular entity, it was a collection of laws, customs, and institutions that together formed a government. Some of these were ended fairly early--Sulla's march on Rome, for example, or Cicero's execution of citizens without trial. Some of these were ended late--it wasn't until 69 CE that an emperor was made outside of Rome without the official backing of the Senate. It was a process. | [
"However, the fall of the Roman Republic intervened, and the beginning of imperial monarchy at Rome followed. Sulla's first march on Rome in 88 BC had begun the collapse of the republican form of government, but the death of Crassus and the loss of his legions utterly reconfigured the balance of power at Rome. An o... |
How inaccurate is this "Adam Ruins Everything" video about the history of Anatomy? | Just a brief response -- despite the host's claim to "ruin everything" by giving counterfactual stories, he's actually delivering a very mainstream hagiography of Vesalius that would have not seemed out of place in the 19th century (though still is popular today, especially in the medical field). The actual history -- both of Vesalius' accomplishments, the long-running influence of Galen, and the birth of scientific medicine -- is much more nuanced.
So just briefly -- human dissection was picked up again by Europeans in the 13th century in Italy, influenced by Arab medicine. When the host talks about "Galen" he's talking about Arab text books translated into Latin like "The Canon of Medicine." By Vesalius' time (16th century), Galen would have also been translated directly from the original Greek into Latin, but Arabic translations were still a large part of the curriculum (and remained that way in some areas into the 19th century). Arab physicians were greatly influenced by Galen, but more recent scholars have shown that there was also a great deal of innovation in this period as well. Al-Nafis, for example, largely described the pulmonary circulation based on dissection, and had already corrected some of Galen's misconceptions, including that the septum of the heart was fully porous.
Mondino is probably one of the first European Arab-inspired physicians, and who most inspired Vesalius. His "Anatomy" was basically a dissection guide (the spiritual predecessor to the disgusting formaldehyde-covered guide that I used and ruined in my first year of medical school). It was based on his observations rather than old text books, though was not illustrated (since it was a guide). Vesalius used his book when doing his dissections.
So here's the biggest misconception that the video probably advocates -- while *we* see Vesalius as the father of anatomy, *he* most certainly did not see himself in that way. Galenic medicine (or what we should probably call something like "traditional Western medicine," though "humoral theory" is usually used) is an all-encompassing explanatory model. Anatomy and physiology are not seen as separate disciplines. Vesalius clearly thought of himself as participating in this tradition, and thought that his findings would help shore up this model by improving on Galen -- and then, most importantly, disseminating this information.
The hagiography about the challenge to Galen is a creating of 18th century doctors who wanted an origin story (and one that would conveniently create a link between the Greeks and European physicians and cleverly cut out the Arabs).
So that was a bit longer than I intended. The history of science and medicine is fascinating, and I think helps us understand trends today. **BUT** repeating simplified stories like the one in the video do little to help us understand how scientists and doctors think, or the complicated, messy tale of scientific advance. I'll get off my soap box now. | [
"Stark observes that the American Medical Journal reported that Michelangelo's \"The Creation of Adam\" appears to conform deliberately to the neuroanatomical shape of the brain, its Sylvian fissure clearly evident, suggesting Michelangelo may have intentionally conflated theology with neurology ( Meshberger 1990: ... |
Just to add more to the current discussion on beer, I have a few questions inside | 1. Water was always an option. Drinking water from sources or even collected rain wasn't that unhealthy. Pure water could become a problem in medieval cities due to the population density and the disposal of waste in natural bodies of water. But as stated in one of the answers of the post you're referring to water from wells, springs and collected rainwater was always reasonable safe to drink.
2. There are malt drinks on the market as health drinks [vitamalz](_URL_1_) for example. But most health drink fixated types will shun the connotation with beer and will take their hop extract and beer yeast pills with a gulp of mangosteen juice or whatever fad there happens to be the next fad. Shame really, a nice trappist ale will provide them with most of whats in there.
3. Making beer was invented in Mesopotamia (persia) about the same time as humans transitioned from hunter/gatherer lifestyle to a farming based society. Writing and mathematics were a direct result of that transition as stocks needed to be kept and the farming surface needed to be measured. Beer made us in the people we are. [See this doc, for example](_URL_0_).
Note that we live closer to the time of cleopatra than cleopatra lived to the first mesopotamian settlers. So we've been drinking beer for a LONG time. | [
"The Museum of Beer and Brewing is a non-profit educational organization that was founded in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States, by a group of beer history enthusiasts. Since its conception, the group has lost one of its founding members, Karl Strauss, a retired brewer from the Pabst Brewing Company. Strauss died ... |
Where does Cicero talk about "a certain Roman praetor, Cassius"? | It's at Cic., *Pro Rosc.*, 84:
> L. Cassius ille quem populus Romanus verissimum et sapientissimum iudicem putabat identidem in causis quaerere solebat 'cui bono' fuisset.
> > That great L. Cassius, whom the Roman people considered the truest and wisest judge [i.e. juror], who was accustomed to asking in court cases over and over 'to whose benefit' it was.
L. Cassius was consul 127, censor 125, and was best known for his involvement in the prosecution of the Vestals in 113 and especially for his tribunate in 137, during which he promulgated a *lex tabellaria* on the secret ballot (Cic., *Brut*., 97; 106; *Leg*., 3,35 -37)
> where in Cicero is this discussion?
~~I'm not sure what you mean. Cicero had not been born yet~~ [Never mind, I read you wrong]. He refers to L. Cassius' principle because the whole point of the speech is that Magnus and Capito stood to gain the most from the death of Roscius' father, and that it doesn't make sense to charge Roscius when all fingers are really pointing at Magnus and Capito.
I also don't understand why Hobbes singles L. Cassius out as a praetor. He held the praetorship, but his was fairly uneventful--his tribunate and time as *iudex* over the Vestals is what he was famous for, and what Cicero singles him out for. Hobbes may be thinking that since praetors often presided over civil courts, Cassius must have been praetor when he made his pronouncement. But Cicero clearly calls him *iudex*, and the praetor would not have been a juror at the same time. Further, Hobbes incorrectly associates the praetorship with criminal courts, which is erroneous. | [
"Cicero's work is typically seen as a list of orators and the development of oratory in Rome. While the purpose of the Brutus is to record the history of oratory and confirm that it has failed to exist, some scholars believe that Cicero fails in adequately achieving his task. This is a problem because Cicero fails ... |
Help explaining some of the pockets of Europe NOT hit by the Black Death | Krakow and Milan both instituted very draconian quarantine procedures early on. I have no idea what happened in the Pyrénées, but it could easily be related to lack of travel in that relatively sparsely populated and mountainous area. | [
"Some studies indicate that the Black Death, which devastated Europe starting in the late 1340s, may have reached Europe from Central Asia (or China) along the trade routes of the Mongol Empire. One theory holds that Genoese traders coming from the entrepot of Trebizond in northern Turkey carried the disease to Wes... |
why does out stomach hurt and we get diarrhea after eating something really spicy and hot? what happens inside of our body? | im not a biologist so take this with a grain of salt, but im guessing its because the stomach is irritated by the spicy food and wants to purge itself. | [
"Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, feeling full soon after beginning to eat (early satiety), abdominal bloating, and heartburn. The most common known mechanism is autonomic neuropathy of the nerve which innervates the stomach: the vagus nerve. Uncontrolled diabetes mellitus is a major cause of this... |
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