question stringlengths 3 301 | answer stringlengths 9 26.1k | context list |
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in regards to verbal communication, how long does it take baby animals to comprehend what their older counterparts are communicating? | Well for humans there's many stages of learning involved in speech and speech comprehension. Babies are prone to mimicking what they see or hear, so seeing the movement of their parents mouths and the noises that come out pushes them to do the same. Obviously their brains are not fully developed so they start with babbling things they hear, then once they are smart enough to associate things with conscious thinking, they'll start calling things by one or two word (doggy, mommy, train, etc.). This is probably around when they start getting the jist of what their parents are saying. As the brain keeps developing they begin understanding the semantics and syntax in language at which point they start becoming more coherent and pretty much fully understand adult human speech.
For animals though, I'm not sure if verbal communication takes as many steps or priority. While humans do communicate slightly with their faces and body movements, animals rely on this far more. Dogs with their tails, position relative to each other, or facial hints like showing teeth and snarling. But they do also growl or whimper which a puppy probably understands innately, just like how all humans know how to smile even if they're from the opposite sides of the world. Other animals are probably like this too with the exception of higher functioning ones such as certain birds or dolphins who even give each other names. They probably follow the same steps of learning as humans, just simpler and much quicker since their life spans are usually lower than ours. Apes such as orangutans don't exactly speak but they can learn sign language so perhaps their ways of communication are more complex and involve learning stages like ours. But I'd wager that most baby animals are born with an understanding of basic verbal noises that indicate emotions. | [
"Infants use words to communicate early in life and their communication skills develop as they grow older. Communication skills aid in word learning. Infants learn to take turns while communicating with adults. While preschoolers lack precise timing and rely on obvious speaker cues, older children are more precise ... |
What happens when you magnetize antimatter? | > According to Einsteins equation a reaction with 1 gram of antimatter colliding with another gram of regular matter of the same element can create x1335 the energy need to propel the Saturn V Rocket to light speed
This uses the Newtonian formula for kinetic energy. The correct formula for kinetic energy shows that you cannot propel it to light speed.
> could we somehow create a stable antimatter housing cell out of a ferrite based cell using magnetism
No. You cannot contain antimatter using a static magnetic field. This is prohibited by Earnshaw's theorem. There are some limited exceptions to the theorem, but it's irrelevant in this context.
Any storage of antimatter would have to be done by active electromagnets that consume energy. [CERN explains this on their site.](_URL_0_) | [
"Antiferromagnets, like ferrimagnets, have two sublattices with opposing moments, but now the moments are equal in magnitude. If the moments are exactly opposed, the magnet has no remanence. However, the moments can be tilted (spin canting), resulting in a moment nearly at right angles to the moments of the sublatt... |
what is the difference between a snowball effect and a domino effect? | Just my thoughts...
Domino effect would create a chain reaction of multiple events.
For example:
you yell at someone, which ruins their day, they then yell at someone, running their day, and so on.
The be original action is essentially repeated in a similar manner.
Snowball effect would create a larger reaction with each transaction.
Similar example:
You yell at someone, which ruins their day, then they yell at 5 people, who each tell at 5 more people, and do on
This creates an increasing intensity when compared to the initial action. | [
"A domino effect or chain reaction is the cumulative effect produced when one event sets off a chain of similar events. The term is best known as a mechanical effect and is used as an analogy to a falling row of dominoes. It typically refers to a linked sequence of events where the time between successive events is... |
Airplanes and passenger weight. Cost difference in flying heavy/light passengers. | I'm approving this on a very tentative basis. Please keep the discussion to the science of flight-weight ratios alone and *not* the ethical implications of such a system. | [
"By this point the Model 2229 effort had progressed to detail design. The 100-passenger aircraft had settled at about 420,000 lb, heavier than the Boeing 707 while holding 20% fewer passengers. As the operational costs of an aircraft are roughly defined by the aircraft fuel use, a function of weight, divided by the... |
Where there any proposals to create an African nation in America? | There were black communities set up by African Americans in the late 1870s-80s, but they weren't protected by the government like Native American reservations.
The people participating in the communities were called [exodusters](_URL_1_) because of the exodus from the south to states like Kansas. One of the more well known exoduster communities is [Nicodemus, Kansas.](_URL_0_)
African Americans in the south first wanted these communities so they could get away from the persecution of the whites in the south during reconstruction years, where they were still subject to persecution and violence despite their new found freedom. | [
"The focus for developing the United States of Africa so far has been on building subdivisions of Africa - the proposed East African Federation can be seen as an example of this. Former President of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, had indicated that the United States of Africa could exist from as early as 2017. The Africa... |
someone explain cpu cores to me | You seem to have a bit of a misconception about what clock speeds mean. It isn't a measurement of how fast a processor is. 2.7 GHz processor means that it does 2.7 billion cycles per second. If you overclocked your CPU to double the clock speed it would be able to make 2x as many calculations per second. But comparing your 2.7 GHz CPU to another 2.7 GHz CPU does not mean they have the same speed.
But, if you got an older processor, say a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 from about 10 years ago, and compared it to your processor. Your processor would blow the old one out of the water. It is much much faster.
Newer machining processes allow them to make smaller and smaller circuits. A new CPU with the same clock speed as an old one can do more calculations because they're able to fit more circuits onto the chip. More circuits = more calculations even if the clock speed is the same. You can't really use a comparison of GHz as a meaningful measure of a processor's performance.
Multiple cores are just different processors. They call them cores because they're built together on the same chip, but they function like multiple unrelated processors.
Having multiple cores is a bit like having 4 people to do a job instead of one. Adding more people can speed up some jobs, but not others. Imagine you're cooking dinner. You want steak, potatoes, and vegetables. With multiple people, you can have each person cook one of the things. Because you're cooking them simultaneously, you've reduced the time of making dinner by 1/3, in comparison to cooking the steak, then the potatoes, and then the vegetables. This sort of task is one that can be easily multithreaded. Meaning it can be easily divided into multiple tasks that can be given to each processor core. Multithreaded tasks become faster with more cores.
In contrast some tasks can't be effectively multithreaded. So, instead of dinner, we're making a cake. You need to mix the ingredients, bake the cake, and then ice it. No matter how many people you add to it, you can't make the cake any faster. You cannot divide this into multiple simultaneous tasks. You cannot ice the cake until it's been baked, and you cannot bake the cake until the ingredients have been mixed. The extra people, or CPU core can only wait until the previous step has been finished. Tasks like these gain no speed with extra cores.
TLDR: CPU clock speeds aren't a reliable measure of processor speed. More cores helps multi-tasking, and only speeds up some tasks.
Edit: What's that yellow icon doing there? Also thanks! | [
"The CPU core is a two-way superscalar in-order RISC processor. Based on the MIPS R5900, it implements the MIPS-III instruction set architecture (ISA) and much of MIPS-IV, in addition to a custom instruction set developed by Sony which operated on 128-bit wide groups of either 32-bit, 16-bit, or 8-bit integers in s... |
why is crying a natural response to both extreme sadness and extreme happiness, but not so much for anything in between? | Crying is a response to extreme emotion- I’ve seen people cry from being scared, angry (kind of the same thing) etc. it’s a natural way to release those pent up emotions. You wouldn’t need to cry over something mild happening, like say, your food order being late, unless you already had a bunch of unexpressed emotions that were piled on. | [
"The question of the function or origin of emotional tears remains open. Theories range from the simple, such as response to inflicted pain, to the more complex, including nonverbal communication in order to elicit altruistic helping behavior from others. Some have also claimed that crying can serve several biochem... |
What's the difference between formulas, algorithms and equations? | An equation always has an "equal" sign in the middle, and declares that the two things on either side of it are equal.
A formula is a type of equation.
An algorithm is a defined series of instructions...a recipe or procedure. | [
"In computing, a formula typically describes a calculation, such as addition, to be performed on one or more variables. A formula is often implicitly provided in the form of a computer instruction such as.\n",
"The mathematical notation used for formulas has its own grammar, not dependent on a specific natural la... |
Were ancient Greek statues really coloured like this? | There was a good discussion about the specifics of the color recreations on the sub a few weeks back; you can read it [here](_URL_0_). | [
"BULLET::::- Ancient Greek sculptures were originally painted bright colors; they only appear white today because the original pigments have deteriorated. Some well-preserved statues still bear traces of their original coloration.\n",
"Ancient Greek sculptures were originally painted bright colors; they only appe... |
how can wal-mart sell so many items for cheaper than other big box store prices? | Wal-Mart is notorious for selling lower quality versions of similar products at other stores. They have other angles, but above all, keep an eye on the quality at Wal-Mart, it is noticeably less than other stores. | [
"Unlike many other retailers, Walmart does not charge [[slotting fee]]s to suppliers for their products to appear in the store. Instead, it focuses on selling more-popular products and provides incentives for store managers to drop unpopular products.\n",
"Products at Walmart Neighborhood Market stores carry the ... |
How different would the star constellation be around Alpha Centauri? Would we share any of the same noticeable constellations? | Even as most of the "constellation stars", ie. the one's visible with the naked eye, tend to be relatively close(*) to Sol, they're still, generally, tens, hundreds and even thousands of lightyears away. So, most of the stars' apparent positions would shift relatively little by the meager 4 ly jump from Sun to Alpha Centauri. You could probably identify most constellations, although you'd maybe have to mentally erase or move a star or two per constellation. I've heard that viewed from over there, our Sun would be a bright star in what we know as the constellation Cassiopeia.
It should be straightforward to map the Alphacentaurian night sky, with the Tycho catalog for example. Somone's probably done that very thing, although I didn't find it ...
As for extragalactic objects (like in your linked image), we wouldn't be seeing basically anything new.
(*) All of the 4000, or so, visible to the naked eye, lie within a 4000-or-so-lightyear radius from us; compare that with 25000 y (or so!) to the centre of the Milky Way.
TL;DR; the view of the cosmos is largely similar (and even the same) from Sun and Alpha Centauri
| [
"Alpha Centauri A and B are Sun-like stars (Class G and K), and together they form the binary star Alpha Centauri AB. To the naked eye, the two main components appear to be a single star with an apparent magnitude of −0.27, forming the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus and the third-brightes... |
Regional Differences in US Soldiers' Placements during WWII? Regional Differences in War Coverage? | For the U.S. Army, generally no, [as I've elaborated on before](_URL_6_), although there were a few interesting exceptions.
One circumstance that could have large numbers of men from the same area fighting together in the same unit in the same theater was if they were members of the National Guard. I wrote previously about the origins of the National Guard [here](_URL_2_);
> The [Militia Act of 1903](_URL_0_) established the **National Guard of each State**, or the organized militia, and the reserve militia. When the National Guard of each state was formed into units, they would need to be organized along the lines of units of the Regular Army and submit themselves to the federal government if they wanted to receive funding. The Militia Act also set the number of yearly exercises, and codified the circumstances under which the National Guard of each state could be federalized; by the president, and for a maximum period of nine months and not outside the United States. In [1908](_URL_1_), the Militia Act was amended to allow the president to set the term limit for federal service as he saw fit, and allow the National Guard to serve outside the United States.
...
> Exactly how the National Guard fit into the structure of the Army in war was not really considered until the [National Defense Act of 1916](_URL_7_). The act provided that the **Army of the United States** would consist of the **Regular Army**, the **Volunteer Army**, the **Officers' Reserve Corps**, the **Enlisted Reserve Corps**, the **National Guard while in the service of the United States**, and **such other land forces as are now or may hereafter be authorized by law**. The act said that members of the National Guard, when called into the service of the United States, would lose their militia status and become members of the Volunteer Army. The organization of the National Guard was also modified; the president had the sole responsibility to delegate the types of units and number of men for each state, rather than the states themselves. The Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) was also established.
> The [1920](_URL_3_) amendments to the National Defense Act of 1916 provided that the **Army of the United States** would consist of the **Regular Army**, the **National Guard while in the service of the United States**, and the **Organized Reserve Corps**, which included the **Officers' Reserve Corps** and the **Enlisted Reserve Corps**.
> In [1933](_URL_4_), another amendment to the Act established the **National Guard of the United States** as a legal entity, and provided that federally recognized National Guard men and officers of each state take a dual oath, and be considered members of the Army of the United States at all times. Officer commissions into the NGUS were technically considered reserve commissions under the amendment. This established the National Guard as the federal reserve component we know today. You will notice that the 1920 amendments to the National Defense Act got rid of the “Volunteer Army.” Its equivalent, first codified in [1940](_URL_8_), was that any enlistments into the Army during a time of national emergency or war as declared by Congress would just be in the “Army of the United States,” and would be for the duration of the emergency or war plus six months. Later, in [1941](_URL_5_), the status of personnel who were drafted into the Army under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 was clarified.
National Guard units were state-based, with the major units being infantry divisions;
Division|Allotted states|Campaign participation credit
:--|:--|:--
26th|Massachusetts|Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe
27th|New York|Elements participated in various campaigns in the Pacific, but not the entire division
28th|Pennsylvania|Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe
29th|Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, D.C.|Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Central Europe
30th|Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee|Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe
31st|Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi|New Guinea, Southern Philippines
32nd|Michigan, Wisconsin|New Guinea, Southern Philippines, Luzon
33rd|Illinois|New Guinea, Luzon
34th|Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota|Tunisia, Naples-Foggia, Rome-Arno, North Apennines, Po Valley
35th|Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska|Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe
36th|Texas|Naples-Foggia, Rome-Arno, Southern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe
37th|Ohio|Northern Solomons, Luzon
38th|Indiana, Kentucky. West Virginia|New Guinea, Southern Philippines, Luzon
40th|California, Nevada, Utah|Bismarck Archipelago, Southern Philippines, Luzon
41st|Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming|Papua, New Guinea, Southern Philippines
43rd|Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont|New Guinea, Northern Solomons, Luzon
44th|Delaware, New Jersey, New York|Northern France, Rhineland, Central Europe
45th|Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma|Sicily, Naples-Foggia, Anzio, Rome-Arno, Southern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe | [
"The official history of the United States Army in World War II says of the unit during this period, \"This unit was undoubtedly one of the best signal outfits in the Army…. The service provided by this crack unit suggested how effective communications could be in the hands of experienced troops.\"\n",
"After the... |
Why on Wikipedia list of top WW2 Ace pilots are above 50 almost only marks only German Luftwaffe pilots? | 1. ***Luftwaffe*** **personnel policy** \- The Germans tended to keep pilots in combat for as long as possible. In general, German *jadgflieger* only stopped flying combat missions if they were killed (Walter Nowotny), badly wounded (Günther Specht, although he eventually returned to service), captured (Ulrich Steinhilper), or promoted (Adolf Galland). By contrast, leading Allied pilots were often promoted to non-flying jobs leading operational units, put on staff duties, or sent to help train up new pilots. Battle of Britain ace "Sailor" Malan became Biggin Hill's station commander in 1942, which limited his ability to fly on operations. U.S. Navy ace "Jimmy" Thach, the inventor of the famous "Thach Weave" maneuver, was transferred to training and staff duties after he'd scored only six kills.
2. **Length of time in combat** \- Virtually every high-scoring German ace flew their first missions over Poland in 1939 or France and Belgium in 1940. Some pilots, like Adolf Galland (96 kills) and Werner Mölders (102-108 kills) had flown with the Condor Legion in the 1930s. Mölders, for example, already had valuable combat experience and several kill claims from the Spanish Civil War before WWII even began. By contrast, Soviet pilots didn't enter combat until June 1941. It wasn't until 1943 that USAAF operations in the ETO began to kick into high gear. And it wasn't until mid-1942 that the USAAF and USN were able to really contest the Japanese in earnest. In short, German pilots had a head start over the pilots of nearly every other Allied nation, with the exception of the RAF. According to Trevor Constable and Raymond Toliver: "One American pilot with 254 missions actually fired his guns at an airborne target only 83 times, and this may well be the best record of any American pilot. In gaining his 352 aerial victories, which establish him as the leading fighter ace of the world and of all time, Major Erich Hartmann flew 1,425 missions. Many times Hartmann flew from two to seven missions a day ... He was involved in more than 800 actual aerial combats." They go on to point out that the ***average*** German pilot flew around 1,000 to 2,000 combat missions. Meanwhile, the most active Allied fighter pilots flew only from 250 to 400 sorties.
3. **Quality of the opposition** \- I don't want to give an unfair impression of the Soviet Air Forces, but I think it's fair to say they weren't ready for war in 1941. The VVS operated a large number of obsolete aircraft like the I-153 biplane and the I-16, with its open-cockpit. Other early-war aircraft like the LaGG-3 also had serious issues (poor build quality, underpowered, etc.). The Germans were able to destroy nearly 4,000 Soviet planes in the air and on the ground during the opening week of Operation Barbarossa. By 1943, the Soviet Air Forces were a much more formidable opponent and by late 1944, they could serious contest air superiority on the Eastern Front. But in 1941-1942, German pilots had a real chance to run up the score against the Soviets. You can make a similar case that the Gloster Gladiators and Hawker Hurricanes of the RAF offered similarly-vulnerable targets for German pilots in North Africa during 1941.
4. **Number of opportunities** \- By 1943 and 1944, the *Luftwaffe* was getting increasingly outnumbered in the skies. That meant relatively few chances for Allied pilots to get kills and that those kills would get spread out over a larger number of pilots. It also meant the reverse for the top German pilots, who had a target-rich environment with lots of chances to get kills. Gunther Rall mentions this in his veryz-enlightening interview here: _URL_0_
5. **Lying,** **over-claiming, and wishful thinking** \- I don't want to single German pilots out too heavily for this one, since aircrew on both sides often wildly-inflated kill claims. Part of this is a product of the confusion and stress of combat. By comparing kill claims to actual loss records, it's cleae pilots often counted damaged planes as "destroyed" or double-counted another pilot's kill. For example, on September 15th, 1941, JG27 claimed 20 kills against RAF and RAAF aircraft over North Africa. However, Christopher Shore, who has written extensively on the air war in the desert, has found that Allied records only report 5 losses on that date. In other words, JG27 had a 3:1 bogus claim to real claim ratio. This is one reason why gun camera footage of a plane exploding or a pilot bailing out was so helpful in verifying a kill claim.
6. **German "one pilot, one kill" accounting rules** - *Luftwaffe* kill counting gave only one pilot credit for each destroyed aircraft. It's not hard to imagine how this "one pilot, one kill" system advantaged higher-ranked veteran pilots over more junior fliers. By contrast, the Commonwealth and American kill systems allowed for fractional kills credits. Credit for one victory could be split between multiple pilots. This is why RAAF ace Cive Caldwell has 28.5 victories and Mustang ace George Preddy has the even-odder score of 26.83 victories.
7. **American claims given more post-war official scrutiny.** - In the 1950s, American kill claims were evaluated by the USAF's Fighter Victory Credits Board. This Board used information only available after the war (ex. German loss records) to reevaluate American wartime kill claims. This was followed by another board in 1978. In 1945, Mustang ace George Preddy had 27.5 kills. After the 1950s Board, he was credited with only 25.83 kills. And after the 1978 Board, he had 26.83 kills. To my knowledge, the *Bundswehr* has never subjected WWII German kill claims to the same level of post-war scrutiny.
& #x200B; | [
"Among many of the combatants, ace status was granted to a pilot who scored five or more kills. Applying this to \"Luftwaffe\" fighter pilots and their records shows more than 2,500 German pilots were aces. However, the Germans did not use this benchmark; instead they awarded the title of \"Experte\" to a fighter p... |
why do so many ant hills show up after it's been raining? | Ant hills are usually caused by ants dumping debris out of the holes that lead into their home complexes. After a rain, a lot of dirt and debris has fallen off the walls and into the holes, and has to be removed. So the ants take all that out and dumps it into the area around the holes, making a hill. | [
"Ant hill art is a growing collecting hobby. It involves pouring molten metal (typically non-toxic zinc or aluminum), plaster or cement down an ant colony mound acting as a mold and upon hardening, one excavates the resulting structure. In some cases, this involves a great deal of digging. The casts are often used ... |
when looking at laptops, is the mah the capacity of the battery? is it multiplied by how many cells there are? | The thing that matters is watt hours. That is amp hours times nominal voltage. Assuming the batteries are of the same chemistry, thus each cell has the same voltage, yes, it's proportional to the number of cells. So the 6 cell 4.4 stores almost twice as much energy as the 3 cell 4.6. | [
"The laptop design specification goals are consumption of about 2 W of power during normal use, far less than the 10 W to 45 W of conventional laptops. With build 656, power consumption is between 5 and 8 watts measured on G1G1 laptop. Future software builds are expected to meet the 2-watt target.\n",
"It is most... |
how was the world able to work together to ban cfcs and protect the ozone layer, but aren't making those same enviornmental gains now? | Not an expert by any means, but CFCs in aerosol cans and the like are easily and cheaply replaced by other gases. Carbon emissions are the main cause of climate change and those are caused by fossil fuel consumption. The oil, gas, and coal industry has a much more powerful lobby in governments, and hydrocarbons are a lot harder to replace in energy generation and manufacturing | [
"In his 1993 book, \"Ecoscam\", Bailey wrote, \"Despite a great deal of continuing scientific uncertainty, it appears that CFCs do contribute to the creation of the Antarctic ozone hole and perhaps a tiny amount of global ozone depletion. ... [I]t makes sense to phase out the use of CFCs.\" When \"Science\" reporte... |
why do many businesses, especially those with long term aspirations lease vs buy their buildings? | Lease payments are deductible business expenses. Leasing property or equipment reduces a company's taxable income dollar-for-dollar.
A building owned by the company is an asset. Depreciation reduces taxable income, as well as does interest on loans taken to acquire business assets, but in general leasing is the better option for tax purposes.
Of course, there is less risk involved with leasing than with ownership. Ask anyone who has moved to a new house while being unable to sell the old one. | [
"Lease-purchase contract agreements are open source in nature and flexible to the needs of the tenant/buyer and landlord/seller. Lease-purchase contracts are popular with tenant/buyers who have poor credit scores, lower savings for down payments, or people who are moving from one city to another but are pending a s... |
why do we as humans, classify things that we perceive are beautiful, elegant, graceful etc. and other things are abhorrent, loathsome, repulsive etc. | I think that this originally comes from instinctual knowledge about how things look. We are predisposed to like flowing water and healthy green plants and to dislike rotting things and dark places basically anything that could have caused us harm. Everything else is just an extension of this and the things we have seen and learned to like or dislike based on experiences. This is all just speculation but I don't think your going to get an answer for this that isn't. | [
"BULLET::::5. \"Beauty\": The collective knowledge of philosophers and mathematicians of the past, as well as modern day artists, scientists, models and musicians form the basis for considering what people find beautiful and why.\n",
"The characterization of a person as “beautiful”, whether on an individual basis... |
where does the flu go? | It's still there. The number of infected people just go down because people aren't stuck inside together, so it doesn't get passed as easily. But once it gets colder and people stay inside together, one infected person can infect more people. | [
"Typically, influenza is transmitted from infected mammals through the air by coughs or sneezes, creating aerosols containing the virus, and from infected birds through their droppings. Influenza can also be transmitted by saliva, nasal secretions, feces and blood. Infections occur through contact with these bodily... |
why do i pass out when i see my own bloody injuries? | Yeah, what we're disgusted/shocked at is generally not in our control. It's not a voluntary response, where we look at something and consciously think, "OH GOSH that is so gross I'm gonna pass out." It's really our subconsciousness' decision.
Since your sister also does this, it might be [vasovagal syncope.](_URL_2_) Just because it has a fancy medical name doesn't mean it's "serious," but it does mean it is studied and recognized as a "disorder." If it really worries you, you can go see a psychologist / psychiatrist and they can help you diagnose it and choose a treatment (please see a professional and don't just take the advice of me, some medical student on the internet). Treatment can be pharmacological or behavioral, i.e. you can take drugs or you can just avoid the trigger or train your brain to stop reacting so severely to the sight of blood. Also, staying well hydrated can help, especially if you know you're about to be in a situation that will expose you to blood.
EDIT: Just realized I never really answered your question. Here's the WHY:
So like I said: we really don't choose what shocks us. So what chooses? There's a part of your brain stem called the [solitary nucleus](_URL_1_) that decides. What it does is it triggers a massive drop in heart rate and opens up your arteries wide, and thus drops your blood pressure. That means less blood reaches your brain, and when that happens, you pass out (makes sense, right? If your brain isn't getting enough blood, it says, "Get horizontal, you stupid body" and we pass out. Simple yet practical.) So why have we evolved this way? Maybe it was so that, if we saw our own blood, we would drop our blood pressure so that less would be squirting out of us. Maybe it was so that we would play possum and whatever was attacking us would think we're dead. Who knows?
[This is a pretty good article on vasovagal syncope, and worth a read.](_URL_0_) | [
"Not only does this interview depict the agony of having to watch ones fellow soldiers being slaughtered, but also how it feels to be personally brutalized. The fire had burned my clothes and I was lying there mostly naked with burns all over my body. There was no bleeding or pain, which had to be a blessing at the... |
the new rules regarding overtime pay announced by the department of labor | An individual has to pass two tests to be considered exempt.
1. They have to perform certain types of duties at work
2. They had to be paid a minimum of $23,600 per year
If they met both tests they were "exempt" from the fair labor standards act, which means they did not have to be paid overtime. They could be paid a set amount of money and work however many hours were needed.
The salary minimum is being raised to $47,476. That means if someone was exempt, but makes less than the new salary, they either a). Need to have their salary increased to at least $47,476 OR b) they now have to be paid overtime (time and a half) for any time worked over 40 hours per week.
Edit: fixed autocorrect. | [
"The U.S. Department of Labor changed overtime pay rules on May 18, 2016. The process began in 2014 when President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum that directed the Department of Labor to update regulations that affect white collar workers who fall under minimum wage and overtime protections.\n",
"The Unit... |
Your Finger is Pricked by a HIV Infected Needle- Can You Amputate To Save Yourself? | No.
This kind of thing happens to nurses and other medical workers more often than you would think.
First, the chances of getting HIV from this type of exposure are pretty low. It isn't like sharing a needle for intravenous drug use where blood is actually drawn up into the syringe.
Second, if there is a known exposure to HIV, the person is put on an anti-viral regimen that lasts for like a month.
Odds of contracting HIV in this manner are well below the threshold where limb amputation would be a reasonable course of action.
edit: _URL_0_
| [
"A simple prick or accidentally touching a used infected needle can put someone at risk of acquiring Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, or HIV. Hepatitis B is the easiest to contract, followed by Hepatitis C, followed by HIV from discarded needles. Almost 50% of people who participate in IVDU have Hepatitis C. Not only are ... |
Does the universe really look like a brain cell? | First it should be pointed out that this is not a picture of the universe. This is picture of a dark matter simulation. That being said, if you choose the right scale, on the right simulation, and choose the right colour scheme to compare with, then they do look similar. I can't say much as to the validity of what a brain cell looks like, though.
There should, however, be no link made between the similarities of these photos. It is a selective coincidence. | [
"The Boltzmann brain argument suggests that it is more likely for a single brain to spontaneously and briefly form in a void (complete with a false memory of having existed in our universe) than it is for our universe to have come about in the way modern science thinks it actually did. It is a reductio ad absurdum ... |
Why can't some tissues like ligaments regenerate? | In order for parts of the human body to regenerate, stem cells have to be present that can differentiate into the damaged tissue. You might be familiar with the fact that your skin is continuously being replaced as old cells are sloughed off and replaced with new ones. This occurs because epithelial stem cells are present to replace old cells upon differentiation. Now the issue with stem cells is in what tissues they can differentiate into. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, meaning that they can differentiate into all embryonic tissue types. Adult stem cells, though, are at best multipotent, meaning they can differentiate into several tissues, but not all of them. So adult stem cells are highly limited in what they're ability to regenerate. The reason that some species (e.g. starfish) can regenerate entire limbs is that they maintain a supply of pluripotent stem cells. Since human stem cells lose potency, they lose the ability to regenerate all types of tissues. Why humans lose stem cell potency is still up for debate, but the gist is that we simply don't have the proper stem cells to do it.
Source: _URL_0_ | [
"Ligaments are similar to tendons and fasciae as they are all made of connective tissue. The differences in them are in the connections that they make: ligaments connect one bone to another bone, tendons connect muscle to bone, and fasciae connect muscles to other muscles. These are all found in the skeletal system... |
what is reddit? | Reddit is like a forum, except anybody can create their own sub-forums (or "sub-reddits") within it if they'd like. Some of the most popular threads in the most popular sub-forums are aggregated and displayed on the front page by default. (The word "aggregate" simply means "to gather together"). However, you can create your own account and then subscribe or unsubscribe to any of these sub-forums as you wish and those subscriptions will change what appears on YOUR front page. So if you sign up and un-subscribe from r/athiesm, then you will no longer see any posts from that sub-reddit appear on the front page while you are logged in. There are thousands of sub-forums to choose from.
Beyond the ability for anybody to create their own sub-forum anybody can also post new threads within any of these sub-forums. These threads can either start off with a text post, just like in an ordinary forum where someone posts a few words or paragraphs and people reply with their own comments, or they can start a thread with a link directly to some website or picture, etc. and people will reply with comments to that. All threads posted can be up-voted or down-voted. The comments that people respond with can also be up-voted and down-voted by anybody who happens across the thread and feels compelled to vote.
Threads and comments can be sorted by the ratio between their upvotes and downvotes or by their age (see: best, top, hot, controversial, newest and oldest). Upvotes/downvotes accrue into a users "karma" score and so there is an artificial incentive for users to post positive or useful threads or comments because you get karma points as a result. Sometimes you'll even get "Reddit Gold" from people as a gift.
That's about it. There are exceptions; it is possible to have private sub-forums where only invited users are allowed access. It's also possible for public sub-forums admins/moderators to ban abusive users from their sub-forum. | [
"Reddit is a website comprising user-generated content—including photos, videos, links, and text-based posts—and discussions of this content in what is essentially a bulletin board system. The name \"Reddit\" is a play-on-words with the phrase \"read it\", i.e., \"I read it on Reddit.\" , there are approximately 33... |
How does the chemical composition of air influences our behaviour? | > Q What happens to human behaviour when the current balance of the global chemical composition of air is changed?
That's a very vague question. Temporary low oxygen enviornments over a few weeks can boost red blood cell count which can benefit athletes in training. High oxygen environments can benefit people, but there is a danger of [Oxygen toxicity](_URL_1_) if the concentration is too high.
Obviously if oxygen concentration is too low it will kill you. And certain gases such as Carbon Monoxide can [displace oxygen](_URL_2_): " CO is breathed in, it attaches to hemoglobin, the molecule that normally carries oxygen in the blood. As more CO is breathed in, more CO attaches to hemoglobin and less oxygen can be delivered throughout the body. This lack of oxygen results in the symptoms associated with CO poisoning.". And there are other gases which would also act as poisons.
> Q What would happen if it would have more of a certain gas which is known to change human behaviour, for example: nitrous oxide.
A "[Nitrous oxide](_URL_0_) (N2O) has been used for well over 150 years in clinical dentistry for its analgesic and anxiolytic properties. This small and simple inorganic chemical molecule has indisputable effects of analgesia, anxiolysis, and anesthesia that are of great clinical interest."
> Q Could we change the chemical composition of air to improve quality of life. For example; make human beings more peaceful, more effective, less susceptible to diseases or to have longer lives?
A We can certainly use low oxygen environments to allow athletes to grow more red blood cells:
> "Athletes can also take advantage of altitude acclimatization to increase their performance. The same changes that help the body cope with high altitude increase performance back at sea level." [Source](_URL_3_) | [
"Air sensitivity is a term used, particularly in chemistry, to denote the reactivity of chemical compounds with some constituent of air. Most often, reactions occur with atmospheric oxygen (O) or water vapor (HO), although reactions with the other constituents of air such as carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO... |
the differences and similarities between anarchy and communism | Anarchy is an ideology which asserts that there is no need for a government for a peaceful and ideal community.
On the other hand communism requires a government. And the key idea behind communism is to make all citizen equal.(This is the duty of the government) For example all of them will have a house but the houses will be all the same and just as comfortable as avarage; not more.
Anarchy does not mention the way that people should live so that one is not actually a comparison but a difference.
I hope this helped. | [
"While communism is proposed as a form of social and economic organisation by many anarchists, other anarchists consider it a danger to the liberty and free development of the individual. Most schools of anarchism have recognized a distinction between libertarian and authoritarian forms of communism. Pierre-Joseph ... |
In the human heart, why are the atria and ventricles of the same side separated from each other? Couldn't there just be a right chamber that pumps blood to the lungs and a left chamber that pumps blood around the body? | It would be possible to make a heart that relies completely on passive filling in humans, but we have evolved from animals in which atria contribute much more than in our heart.
In mammals and humans, the atria play a relatively small role, when they contract they contribute ~10-30% to ventricular filling. In an otherwise healthy person, you can knock out atrial contraction (For example, in atrial fibrillation), and there is no change in cardiac output. For some people who already have poor heart function, the loss of that extra filling can be the difference between hanging in there and decompensating.
Evolutionarily atria were more important. In fish, for example, which have a 2-chambered heart, the atrium is comparatively much larger, and its contraction contributes much more to cardiac output. Frogs have a 3-chambered heart with 2 atria and one ventricle and similarly atrial contraction is important for maintaining cardiac output. | [
"The heart is a four-chambered organ consisting of right and left halves, called the right heart and the left heart. The upper two chambers, the left and right atria, are entry points \"into\" the heart for blood-flow returning from the circulatory system, while the two lower chambers, the left and right ventricles... |
why do people that aren't normally suicidal, randomly have the urge or thought to drive into oncoming traffic or other ways to die? | The feeling you're describing is called as L’appel du Vide or the high place phenomenon.
The speculation is that when you see somthing like oncoming traffic, you veer away or step back as an instinct, a survival response. But your conscious brain, constructs a rational explanation for the instinct. "I must have wanted to drive into that traffic." This post hoc explanation revises your understanding of the situation, implanting intent or motive where none existed. | [
"Some suicides are the result of intended car crashes. This especially applies to single-occupant, single-vehicle accidents, \"because of the frequency of its use, the generally accepted inherent hazards of driving, and the fact that it offers the individual an opportunity to imperil or end his life without conscio... |
I'm the head of a Roman family during the height of the Imperial Period and the Tax Collector asks for the taxes, and I refuse for one reason or another. What happens next? | The head of a *Roman* family? Or a provincial? A Roman wouldn't have had to pay taxes, Roman citizens were exempt from all taxes except the vectigals, a broad class of duties levied generally on trade. Most Roman citizens would not have paid any taxes at all, except for those few who engaged in some sort of merchant trade and therefore needed to pay vectigal duties. Other than that the only real tax that most Roman citizens paid was the inheritance tax, a subset of the vectigals, which was paid only by a relatively few and only once, when inheritance was passed on--failure to pay the inheritance tax was a big deal, it would get the emperor breathing down your neck. It really depends on what you're looking for--the answer to the question as you've phrased it is that our hypothetical *pater familias* (what constitutes the height of the Imperial Period exactly?) probably wouldn't pay anything | [
"The measures of taxation in the reign of Augustus were determined by population census, with fixed quotas for each province. Citizens of Rome and Italy paid indirect taxes, while direct taxes were exacted from the provinces. Indirect taxes included a 4% tax on the price of slaves, a 1% tax on goods sold at auction... |
How do scientists know what planets look like, what they're made out of, whether it could sustain life etc. They're millions of light years away and they don't see much detail, right? And what do scientists see when they see into telescopes like the Hubble. Do they just see a round ball or more? | Well, first off, we don't know of any exoplanets that are millions of light years away. That's MUCH too far to be able to spot planets.
[Here's a list of known exoplanets.](_URL_0_) The farthest one is 8500 parsecs, which is about 27,700 light years. Still a pretty good distance, but barely 1/4 of the way across our own galaxy.
The list also includes the detection method for each exoplanet. There are several ways we detect them, the most common of which is called a transit. This occurs when the planet passes directly between us and it's star, causing the star to appear to dim. Based on the timing and amount of dimming, and with some other information like watching for the star to 'wobble' as the planet orbits, we can form an estimate of some information about the planet, such as it's size and orbital period.
Once we know the size and distance to the star, we can make an educated guess on it's composition.
If it's closer to it's star than Mercury is to the sun and has a mass 5x that of Jupiter's, then we can be pretty sure it's a large and very hot gas giant and not a likely location to find life. If the planet is roughly earth-sized and within it's star's habitable zone, the region where liquid water is likely to occur, that's when we get interested and start talking about life possibly existing there.
Very few exoplanets can be directly imaged, and most of those are very young planets that haven't cooled yet so still glow with infrared light. Being very large and far from their star (outside the habitable zone) helps as well, the smallest yet found is still almost twice the mass of Jupiter. As a result, none of these planets are considered likely candidates to find life on.
[Here's a wiki page with a list of directly imaged planets and an animated image](_URL_1_) of the HR 8799 system which has 4 visible exoplanets. | [
"The goal of these missions is not only to detect Earth-sized planets, but also to directly detect light from the planet so that it may be studied spectroscopically. By examining planetary spectra, it would be possible to determine the basic composition of an extrasolar planet's atmosphere and/or surface. Given thi... |
"It ain't over til the Fat Lady Sings" | This quote is supposed to be about Brunhilde singing her final aria at the end of Gotterdammerung, which is the last opera in the Ring Cycle (four total operas) and is about 6 hours long. (!!!) Brunhilde is often a larger woman, and her [traditional costume has her in a chestplate and a winged hat](_URL_0_) - she's actually the source of that hoary old image of opera singers.
The phrase is very modern, a lot of it has to do with Wagner's domination of the opera canon in the 20th century, as well as his domination of what people think opera is in American popular culture. Baroque operas and early classical operas typically ended with a chorus, not an aria, so the phrase couldn't come from that time. Some late classical/Romantic operas have soprano aria finishes, but it's not really common enough to get you the phrase "it ain't over till the fat lady sings." Fair amount of opera singers have always been fat though, I'll give you that one! :) But they just don't *always* finish operas, not even close.
Wagner's operas inspire some funny quotes though. Here's a few:
"The opera started at 8pm. At midnight I looked down at my watch. It said 8:15." -- attributed to Billy Wilder, but dubious.
"After the last notes of Gotterdammerung I felt as though I had been let out of prison." -- alleged to Tchaikovsky
"Monsieur Wagner has good moments, but awful quarters of an hour!" -- Rossini
"In the evening we went to see Tristan und Isolde. That was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen or heard in my life. To be forced to see and hear such crazy lovemaking the whole evening, in which every feeling of decency is violated and by which not just the public but even musicians seem to be enchanted - that is the saddest thing I have experienced in my entire artistic life. I remained to the end since I wanted to hear the whole thing. During the entire second act the two of them sleep and sing; through the entire last act -- for fully forty minutes -- Tristan dies. They call that dramatic!!!" -- Clara Schumann (this one is not dubious at all!) | [
"When the show started there was a segment called \"The Game's Not Over Until the Fat Lady Sings\", where an overweight lady would go to a game and sing when she thought that the game was over. This segment was scrapped due to the fat lady being fired for singing after the siren had gone. The part of the fat lady w... |
why when i zoom out on ascii art it changes color? | Text scaling gets weird when individual characters get really small - near the pixel size or smaller.
When dealing with modern digital LCD displays and modern operating systems, you're starting to look at [sub-pixel rendering](_URL_0_) of text (just looking at the pictures in that article will probably answer your question for you).
Tangentially related, the old Atari 8-bit PCs (the 400 and the 800) had the same sort of issues when displaying on regular CRT screens. [Here's an example](_URL_1_) of them drawing 'white' lines in high-resolution mode. | [
"\"Colors! 3D\" allows users to draw on five layers, each on their own stereoscopic 3D plane. Drawing is done on the bottom screen while the top screen displays the painting in 3D. While drawing, players can use the various controls on the Nintendo 3DS to change layers, zoom and pan, and alter the pressure of their... |
Question Regarding Radar Fire Control in WWII | Some Japanese vessels, like the new Akizuki class as well as larger capital ships like the Kongo, Haruna, Yamato, and more, were equipped with a surface-surface radar (Type 22) that could be used to provide information to the fire control systems. It was fairly standard equipment by early 1944 or so, and entered service in early 1942. However, this was not the same as dedicated fire control radar; the radar set simply found the range and bearing to a target and fed those to the guns; there was no shot correction or blind fire capability. The Japanese navy was in the process of developing dedicated fire-control radar, but the war ended before they could be put in service. [This](_URL_0_) is a good and sourced online resource for the Japanese navy during the war, and [this](_URL_0_radar.htm) subpage outlines the various Japanese radar types in service.
In comparison, most contemporary Allied ships at the time had a fully blind-capable fire control with a PPI scope (i.e. the spinning lines with dots that show target positions like you see in movies). These more advanced radars, such as the American Mk. 13, had a much higher resolution and were able to detect the shell splashes and correct their fire, making them much more accurate. Their effectiveness over Japanese radars was seen in the action at Surigao Strait at Leyte Gulf, one of the few times where American and Japanese battleships directly engaged one another. | [
"Most fire-control radars have unique characteristics, such as radio frequency, pulse duration, pulse frequency and power. These can assist in identifying the radar, and therefore the weapon system it is controlling. This can provide valuable tactical information, like the maximum range of the weapon, or flaws that... |
what was the reason for nintendo 64 to use a 64-bit processor, and why did it take 10 years for every other processor type to catch up? | Chance, I would suppose. A company called Silicon Graphics Inc. acquired another company called MIPS Technologies specifically because MIPS Technologies had created this really cheap, really powerful new 64-bit processor (MIPS R4000), and Silicon Graphics Inc. wanted the technology.
SGI had initially offered the technology to SEGA, for the Sega Saturn, but SEGA insisted on having exclusive rights to the chip—whereas SGI was fully intent on putting it's processors in non-gaming machines—thus, SGI offered to license their processors to Nintendo, instead.
Other things that may be of interest to you:
-N64 software very rarely utilized 64-bit data operations, and if they did they likely wouldn't run on the N64 at all, due to the limited BUS (data highway) speeds of the CPU, and the fact that all calls to memory had to go through the Reality Co-Processor (a CPU dedicated specifically to video/audio operations) which increased latency.
-Sega's American and Japanese branches had a hilariously disastrous relationship; they never agreed... on anything. This is likely what caused them to bomb the deal with SGI, as well as fall out of the console market altogether.
I hope this is helps answer your question :).
P.S. This is my first post on Reddit, so I apologize if anything is amiss. | [
"The Nintendo 64, originally announced as the \"Ultra 64\", was released in 1996. The system's delays and use of the expensive cartridge format made it an unpopular platform among third party developers. Several popular 1st party titles allowed the Nintendo 64 to maintain strong sales in the United States, but it r... |
Do rubber soles on our shoes actually protect us from lightning strikes? | No, it's very unlikely that they do.
Air has a dielectric strength of 3 MV/m. To travel 1 m, we need 3 million volts. To travel two meters, 6 million volts. And so on.
Rubber has ~15 MV/m. It seems a lot more insulating than air. This means that for electricity to travel through your 1 cm soles, we need a voltage of 0.01 m x 15 MV/m = 0.15 MV = 150000 V = 0.15 million volts.
Let's imagine that it's lightning that is going to strike somewhere and you're in the middle of the field. It starts in a cloud somewhere high above your head, and gets all the way to your feet. The difference of voltage between cloud and ground is likely several (hundreds) of million volts, so is very unlikely to stop there. But hey, may be you're lucky and the ligthning strike is short 0.1 million volts so it strikes on the grass next to you because the last cm of air is less insulating than your shoes?
Bad news: *you*'re a lot less insulating than air, so despite your insulating soles, you're doing the lightning a favour by being a salty solution that conducts electricity really well, so you spare the lightning roughly the last 2 m (6 million volts). 6 million volts for your soles? Not a chance.
| [
"In the industrial settings such as paint or flour plants as well as in hospitals, antistatic safety boots are sometimes used to prevent a buildup of static charge due to contact with the floor. These shoes have soles with good conductivity. Anti-static shoes should not be confused with insulating shoes, which prov... |
What was the first country to have an accurate map of the whole world? | Maps are still being refined. What do you intend with "accurate"? | [
"Kunyu Wanguo Quantu (; , \"Complete Geographical Map of all the Kingdoms of the World\"), printed by Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci at the request by Wanli Emperor in 1602, is the first known European-styled Chinese world map (and the first Chinese map to show the Americas). The map is in Classical Chinese... |
Why do some animals have completely blacked out eyes? | It's an evolutionary trait that has benefited certain types of predators.
Looking at this from the other side. What benefit comes from eyes that have white around the cornea?
In herd animals or pack predators there is a type of non verbal queue that allows for one to estimate the direction in which another member of the group is looking.
The opposite has a benefit if hunting such animals. They can't tell exactly where you are looking.
The difference has meant more success for those whose species habits and behavior were benefited by one over the other.
| [
"Animals with this pattern may include birds, cats, cattle, dogs, foxes, horses, pigs, and snakes. Some animals also exhibit colouration of the irises of the eye that match the surrounding skin (blue eyes for pink skin, brown for dark). The underlying genetic cause is related to a condition known as leucism.\n",
... |
How was bronze-/iron age metal mined, what types of metals where mined. | hi! not discouraging anyone from providing more info, but FYI, you may be interested in previous posts on mining from the FAQ (link on sidebar):
[Mineral resource extraction](_URL_0_) | [
"Innovation of the technique of smelting ore ended the Stone Age and began the Bronze Age. The first most significant metal manufactured was bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, each of which was smelted separately. The transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age was a period during which modern people could sme... |
Has anyone proved how many colors you would need if you had a cube with an arbitrary number of three-dimensional regions in it so that no two bordering regions are the same color? It would be like the four color theorem but in three dimensions. | There are generalizations of the 4-color theorem to arbitrary surfaces. The classical 4-color theorem is concerned with maps drawn on a plane, but we can consider maps drawn on a sphere, or a torus, or a Mobius band, or any 2-dimensional manifold. It turns out that answer to that question is known, and the maximum number of necessary colors depends only on the so-called *Euler characteristic* of the surface. There is a known explicit formula that is valid for all *closed* surfaces.
For 3-dimensional manifolds, there is no equivalent theorem because we can easily construct "maps" that require any number of colors. For instance, consider a collection of *N* spaghetti noodles, each of which represents 1 "country". It is possible to twist these noodles around each other so that each noodle touches all other noodles. Thus we need *N* colors to color this map. So we can always come up with a "3-dimensional map" that requires any arbitrarily large number of colors. It's possible even to construct a "3-dimensional map" that requires infinitely many colors (that is, a map with infinitely many regions all of which touch each other). | [
"(Independently found by F.R.K.Chung. Improving on this, Marston Conder in 1993 showed that for all n not less than 3 the edges of the \"n\"-cube can be 3-colored in such a way that there is no monochromatic 4-cycle or 6-cycle).\n",
"There are 96 center pieces which show one color each, 48 edge pieces which show ... |
Did the average American see the Civil War coming? | Adapted from a previous answer:
**1/2**
Did anybody see the Civil War coming? The answer there that it depends what one means by "see the Civil War coming" and also what "the Civil War entails" in their minds when they do or don't see it. So let's open the box on Schroedinger's Antebellum American for the firm yes and firm no that are both correct.
Predictions of *a* civil war are almost as old as the Republic, regularly raised as the obvious result of an attempt at breaking the Union. These largely take the role of a general fear and warning, rather than a specific thing people expect to happen in the immediate future. So in the most permissive sense we can say that many people saw it coming, but that papers over a lot of important nuance. A theoretical civil war is, most of the time for most Americans, not a major concern. When tensions over slavery rise -and it's always slavery that brings things to this point- there's a sense that Something Must Be Done or the whole nation may explode. That Something is basically to give slavery extra protections and advantages beyond its already extraordinary protection granted by the Constitution, guarantees which considerably exceed any later provided for freedom or equality. There's usually also a fig leaf for free state pols so they can say they didn't *totally* betray their constituents (at least the ones who dislike slavery) but those concessions are insbustantial and never remotely commensurate with what the enslavers got.
Until the late 1840s, the steady give (to enslavers) and take (from the enslaved) is the general outline of American politics without major exception. The conflict over the spoils of the Mexican War marked an important departure from that norm and things never quite get back to the status quo ante. There's always been conflict over slavery's future in the nation, but coming into the 1850s the usual rounds of heavy capitulation to the enslavers don't do the trick anymore. Partly, it's that they've gotten so extreme that ordinary whites across the North now feel personally implicated in slavery in ways they were not before courtesy of the Fugitive Slave Act but there's also a general trend of lesser known proslavery provocations that slowly added weight to the antislavery case in the decades prior. The two trends feed on each other in important ways, but most white Americans outside the general evangelical reformist movement of the era don't consider themselves primarily antislavery in their politics until the last antebellum decade even if they do oppose the institution. The big reactions to the Compromise of 1850, followed up by the realization that it really settled nothing, a series of daring rescues of fugitive slaves from their would-be captors, and similar genuinely popular resistance to slavery kick off the decade.
The tension only ratchets up from there, with a new provocation in the form of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The law opens vast new territories to slavery, where American law had previously forbade its entry for thirty years. That whether or not slavery will go into Kansas will be settled on the ground leads to a fair bit of actually fighting it out during small-scale violence that erupts for a while into a little war within the territory. Seeing this as their chance to put right what went wrong with the Kansas-Nebraska Act, antislavery Northerners are eager to fund settlement by their own people in the territory. Proslavery Missourians view this as stealing "their" turf and respond with semisecret paramilitaries, massive vote fraud, and a fair bit of violence around polling places. All of this keeps the issue in the news and at the center of American politics past the middle of the decade.
This is all way too much for the systems built up in the 1820s and 1830s to muzzle antislavery whites and defend slavery to handle. The biggest of those are two national parties, with enough constituency and power in each section to act as effective pressure on antislavery members in their own ranks to keep in line *and* to a lesser degree to force other issues which divide antislavery men between the two parties. As long as antislavery whites are divided between Whigs (mostly) and Democrats (an important minority) and other issues on which they disagree (the tariff, internal improvements, the national bank) remain the focus of politics, all this can keep puttering along. When slavery takes center stage and becomes *the* issue, then who cares about the bank, some roads, or a duty on whatever? In that environment, being antislavery counts more and the party coalitions fracture.
That happens in every sectional clash, which is why more conservative types understand them as so threatening. What happens in 1852-5 is a lot worse than usual because the dispute over the Mexican Cession went on for literal years and the solution kept the issue alive. That solution was a Whig program, roughly, originally managed by the party's chief founder Henry Clay. Clay's solution did not get through Congress with mainly Whig votes because the party's antislavery wing would not accept it and their proslavery wing was lukewarm at best. Instead it's managed by Stephen Douglas, the Democracy's rising star. In the South, that means that the Democrats can deliver for slavery and the Whigs cannot. Until this point, Whiggery has been the South's second party and genuinely competitive in some states. The fallout from 1850 is a lot of Whigs staying home and Whig pols being pounded at the polls. At the same time, Southern Democrats are adopting a still more radically proslavery line...and they were already incredibly proslavery. Lower South Whiggery collapses.
What's that do to the Whig Party? It had a bit of a northern tilt to begin with. It's just lost a lot of its voices in the Lower South which tend to be more compromise-minded toward the North as well as an important counterweight on the strong antislavery wing up in the North. The result is a party that's somewhat more antislavery (although still not primarily so) which makes the problem for Southern Whigs worse still. But there are enough conservative, proslavery Whigs in the North to maybe even some of that out. The thing is, they're all tainted by the fact that they voted for hated elements of the Compromise of 1850, particularly the Fugitive Slave Act and their leaders insist that that most odious law must be zealously enforced.
Maybe the Whigs could have recovered from that had the Kansas Question not opened when it did, but that kicks up in 1853 (a little) and then goes huge in 1854. With those conservative Whigs still around making the party look bad, actual antislavery Whigs have a sense that the party is not going to ever come around their way and that it may not be a longterm viable vehicle for them. The fallout from this is that the Whigs contest the presidential election in 1852, lose, and never do another. By the time 1856 rolls around, antislavery Whigs have gotten together with antislavery Dems (who are getting out of their own party for its more radical proslavery turn) to form the Republicans. Because it's a heterogeneous group of people united only on opposing slavery, the GOP is fundamentally an antislavery party first and everything else question mark. That makes it by default a Northern party, though there are some important players from the least enslaved slave states among the lot.
We can flip the script and do the same for the South, where the Democrats are now absolutely the Southern party and the question is how Southern they will be. Their dispute, internally, is over how far to go with slavery in the territories just as the GOP's uniting issue is that slavery will go no farther. These divisions harden steadily over the 1850s, particularly in the decade's back half when the Dems have two important crack-ups of their own. The first of these is over whether to accept the obviously fraudulent proslavery government of Kansas as a state (remember the proslavery guys cheated *massively*) or instead take on the antislavery Kansas government which is *technically* illegal and *possibly* treasonous but actually has the solid support of a majority of white Kansans. This is the point where the big names lay into each other, with James Buchanan on one side going his all for slavery as he has done for an entire long and miserable career and Stephen Douglas (him again) insisting that none of what shook out in Kansas was what he intended when he started the whole mess, the antislavery guys started it, but in the end you gotta give it to their government.
| [
"The casualties of American Civil War did more than simply reduce the male population of the country, they also dramatically increased the number of widows and orphans. Many states reacted to the crisis by erecting new (or taking over existing) buildings to \"care for, educate and train the children of fallen soldi... |
are there examples of countries that were made artifically successful? are they still successful? is the same thing possible today with any 3rd world country? | one could very easily argue Japan if what I understand about your question is correct.
Japan was heavily invested in by the United States and the west after WWII. Given now-to-no interest loans, and tariff-free trading abilities Japan was able to rebuild much faster than the other countries that had been destroyed in WWII.
Because so much of the world was destroyed, and yet so much of it was left untouched it allowed for the haves to build up select have-nots, with the current global economy this is not possible to recreate. | [
"However, successful achievements are few and mostly in the developed countries (in Western Europe - especially Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands; as well as in the USA and Japan) where a culture of leadership and collaboration between the different stakeholders at the community's governance level alread... |
at what point in space would something actually become "weightless?" | There is no "range limit" on gravity. As you get farther away it takes more sensitive instruments to measure it, but it never stops. "Weightless" simply means that you and your surroundings are accelerating together at the rate that matches that caused by the local gravity curvature. You can be weightless in a plane, with the right maneuver. | [
"While the weight of an object is dependent on the strength of the local gravitational field, the mass of an object is independent of gravity, as mass is a measure of the quantity of matter. Accordingly, for astronauts in microgravity, no effort is required to hold objects off the cabin floor; they are \"weightless... |
How long does it take for a star to go nova/supernova, and what would it look like? (Among other questions) | The Sun won't "blow up". The last evolutionary stage of the Sun is the AGB (Asymptotic Giant Branch) where it starts to pulsate, shredding off most of its mass into a giant [nebula](_URL_0_) leaving a very hot and very dense core consisting of mostly free electrons. This core remnant is known as a *white dwarf*. A white dwarf has the potential to "blow up" in a violent Type Ia supernova explosion but only if it exceeds a mass limit known as the *Chandrasekhar limit*. The only real way a white dwarf will obtain enough mass for it to exceed this limit and explode is to accrete the mass of a neighboring binary star. If the white dwarf doesn't have a binary companion, which our Sun hasn't, the white dwarf will just remain a white dwarf while it sits and cools by itself for a *very long time* with no supernova explosion. | [
"A star would take between 11.5 and 15 million years to reach the red supergiant stage, with more rapidly-rotating stars taking the longest. Rapidly-rotating stars take only 9.3 million years to reach the red supergiant stage, while stars with slow rotation take only 8.1 million years. These form the best estimates... |
how do people learn to enjoy the taste of hard liquors such as whisky? | Drink rotgut to get drunk, then drink something of higher quality to enjoy the experience of drinking. You'll appreciate the difference.
Note: don't do this all in one night. | [
"The whisky is tasted, often a little at first, and then in larger amounts and with the spirit being moved around the tongue and swallowed slowly. The purpose of the first tasting is to appraise the texture while subsequent tastings are to analyse flavours and scents. In the second tasting the primary flavours are ... |
Is it true that Mahatna Gandhi used to sleep with two girls, naked and told people that he's learning self control? | You may be interested in [these two](_URL_0_) previous [answers](_URL_1_) on Gandhi by /u/CogitoErgoDoom and /u/barath_s, respectively. | [
"Gandhi tried to test and prove to himself his \"brahmacharya\". The experiments began some time after the death of his wife in February 1944. At the start of his experiment he had women sleep in the same room but in different beds. He later slept with women in the same bed but clothed, and finally he slept naked w... |
what actually happens mechanically when you turn the thermostat in your car? | Modern cars have electronic thermostats, so nothing mechanical happens with the actual thermostat, although a mechanical valve governing the airflow might move.
Traditional thermostats are purely mechanical, however. They have a component called bimetal, it consists of two strips of different type of metal joined together, one end is free to move, the other is clamped down. When the free end of the bimetal touches a conductor (normally a piece of carbon), an electrical circuit is closed. Because the different types of metal will expand or contract a different amount depending on the temperature, the bimetal will bend a certain amount depending on the temperature. Now, when you adjust the thermostat, what you're actually doing is moving the conductor that the free end of the bimetal touches, so the bimetal has to bend more to touch it.
Edit: Forgot to add, instead of having the bimetal close an electrical circuit, it can also be mechanically connected to a valve for example, opening and closing the valve depending on the temperature. Adjusting the thermostat in that case adjusts the length of the rod connecting the bimetal to the valve, so the valve is more or less open at a certain temperature. | [
"The thermostat is therefore constantly moving throughout its range, responding to changes in vehicle operating load, speed and external temperature, to keep the engine at its optimum operating temperature.\n",
"The internal combustion engine cooling thermostat maintains the temperature of the engine near its opt... |
why do streaming video services (vudu, netflix, amazon, etc.) load up in full hd within a matter of seconds, but youtube videos can take 30 seconds to partially buffer in only 240p? | Let's say you want to get to work and you have a whole lot of money and comfort is important to you. So you hire a limo to take you to work and pay $100 every day for that service. For $100 you get a lot of comforts, a private limo, plenty of room to spread your legs, leather seats, a mini-bar, it's pretty sweet.
On the other hand, a lot of people don't want to spend money so they take the bus. The bus is noisy and bumpy and crowded and sometimes you have to stand, but it's free and the bus company makes money with ads on the side of the bus and on the top inside. The ad company pays them 10 centers for every person who rides and sees the ads.
A lot of people take the bus, let's say it's 10,000 people! At 10 cents per person the bus company makes $1000 a day!
So the bus company is actually making double what the limo company does, but they still can't afford the same type of comfort because they have to support 10,000 people instead of 5. This means even though they make more money it's a less comfortable ride because there is less money per person.
Streaming services work the same way. Youtube is free and has to handle a ton of people and they only make very little off each one. On the other hand Netflix and the like is charging a monthly fee, so they actually make a lot more off each person, and thus can offer a higher quality service. | [
"The amount of data used by video streaming services depends on the quality of the video. Thus, Android Central breaks down how much data is used (on a smartphone) with regards to different video resolutions. According to their findings, per hour video between 240p and 320p resolution uses roughly 0.3GB. Standard v... |
How hydraulic systems work in space? | Tanks in space have a zone for liquid and another one for gas, separated by a flexible or movable membrane (a diaphragm). It's the pressure of the gas that pushes on the liquid (okay, it pushes on the diaphragm which in turn pushes the liquid) forcing it to stay next to the tank outlet.
The problem with this approach is that, as the fuel/oxidizer liquid is consumed, more room is left for the gas to expand, which causes its pressure to decrease. There are two solutions for that:
* Reserve a lot of ullage volume, i.e. a lot of space for the gas. This way pressure will drop very little as the liquid volume diminishes. Pros: simple, low cost. Cons: very big tanks are needed (since tanks are heavy and mass is a major cost driver in space, this is very bad).
* Add a second, smaller tank to contain gas at very high pressure, and link it to the main one via a pressure regulator. Pros: you get rid of all the mass of the big tank. Cons: some mass is still needed for the smaller tank, and it adds complexity to the system.
These two approaches work well for small rocket engines, such as those used by attitude control systems (i.e. rotating in space). For larger rockets such as those in launchers, you're going to need pumps. | [
"Hydraulic cylinders are fundamental components of hydraulic machinery. The function of a hydraulic cylinder is to convert the hydrostatic power of a fluid into mechanical power. They are the actuators or muscles of heavy equipment providing motion and force including steering, suspension, pushing, pulling, lifting... |
what does microsoft’s announcement really mean and why are people so upset? | If you’re talking about that “pedophile tracker”, most people think it’s
A. Not effective and most likely will be like other AI detectors.
B. Simply an excuse to look at peoples chatrooms under the pretense of safety.
C. Ineffective because, Weill, who uses chatrooms anymore?
That’s just what I’ve heard about it, sorry if that doesn’t help much
Edit: no ones gonna know what you’re talking about, could you more specific? | [
"In March 2019, Microsoft announced that it would display notifications to users informing users of the upcoming end of support, and direct users to a website urging them to purchase a Windows 10 upgrade or a new device.\n",
"On March 8, 2014, Microsoft deployed an update for XP that, on the 8th of each month, di... |
Is our Solar System's number of planets and planetoids, and the distance between them, unusual? | I must admit, that I haven't played either Mass Effect nor Infinite Space. But in general games are not the best source for scientific accuracy ;)
According to the [exoplanet archive](_URL_0_) there are almost 600 confirmed multiplanet systems. The largest of which have 7 confirmed exoplanets. I don't know about a paper that actually analyses the distances of the exoplanets to their host stars. However after going through some of the wikipedia site ([here](_URL_3_)) and checking some other ressources such as the exoplanet archive I would come to the conclusion that most exoplanet are indeed much closer to their host stars than planets in our system. However this should not be seen as a definite result. Our current detection methods definitely favor the detection of large planets close to their host star. Far away planets like neptune, uranus are much harder to detect. But we still found some really far away ([source](_URL_1_)). I mean we are not even sure if there are more planets out there in our own system. I personaly think it is unlikely that our system is "special". But you never know :)
Btw, here a nice visualization of many exoplanet systems can be found: [video](_URL_2_)
& nbsp;
btw. these naming of these objects is a bit difficult, but if anything they would be called Plutoids or trans-neptunian dwarf planets | [
"Observations of exo-planets have shown that arrangements of planets similar to our Solar System are rare. Most planetary systems have super Earths, several times larger than Earth, close to their star, whereas our Solar System's inner region has only a few small rocky planets and none inside Mercury's orbit. Only ... |
why don't popular types of candy (m & m's, skittles, reese's, etc.) have cheaper knockoff versions like all other products? | They manage to keep their products so cheap, and they have such incredible brand recognition, that it's essentially impossible to compete with them. | [
"In 2008, two limited-edition varieties of the candy were introduced – \"Wildly Cherry\" M&M's, and, as a marketing tie-in with the film \"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull\", \"Mint Crisp\" M&M's.\n",
"Candy pumpkins are popular in part because the mellowcreme gives them \"an interesting texture... |
Is the "time goes faster as we get older" adage an actual psychological phenomenon? | Think of it, perhaps, in terms of Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. When you're young, you are constantly growing, learning. You are also changing physically, socially and mentally. People go through five of these stages by the time they hit their young adulthood. It's common to see people attain indicators of adulthood around their mid to late twenties or early thirties. These could include, leaving the home you grew up in, settling in on a career, getting married, etc. Once these events happen in one's life, among other aspects, the physical, mental and social changes have slowed down and solidified. Now, life stages are gone through on the scale of decades and life can seem so monotonous compared to younger years.
This can be one of several reasons why time seems to fly by when we get older. | [
"Many older adults claim time speeds up as they get older, which can be explained by forward telescoping. Since forward telescoping leads people to underestimate the amount of time that has occurred since an event, people may feel as if time has passed quickly when they discover the true amount of time since that e... |
why do white people in the west have much higher suicide rates? | Presuming you mean European-descendent people in the Western World (typically North America + western Europe), and noting that what motivates suicide is wildly individually dependent, generally some contributing factors to the suicide rates of this (big, diverse) cohort include (but are not limited to):
**Secularism & meritocracy** as cultural values, which tend to frame the world as without inherent meaning, and shaped by human action. In this frame, shortcomings in personal or professional life tend to fall more on the shoulders of individuals than in places where "God's will", "karma", etc. can be used to account for unfortunate circumstances. Rather than seeing themselves as specks floating in a sea they can't possibly control, and hence having a contented resignation to circumstance, the "story" is that you are what you make of yourself, and you can only blame yourself if things don't go well. This will understandably affect suicide rates.
**Material comfort in an absurd existence** carries with it the same lesson as the old saying "ignorance is bliss". As white westerners live some of the more materially comfortable lives on the planet, their mental lives may be more freed up to think "big thoughts" or, some might say, exceedingly small thoughts. Without the restraint of a highly conformist culture, or the need to perform exhausting toil endlessly, the mental and emotional world is given more room to express and be investigated. Related the secularism of the last paragraph, reality is often in this cultural context taken to be "absurd", that is, it's so complex and seemingly (from man's perspective) contradictory that there can be no final understanding it. "Why are beings born, only to die?", "Why should anything exist? Why not nothing?". If you have all the material comforts you need, but set about trying to solve a paradox logically, the results will be mental stress, cognitive dissonance, etc. If this is allowed to persist too far (as our academic culture, our individualism, and the anonymity of the internet are wont to enable), a person can drive themselves into agitated, impulsive suicide, or even a calm, "rationally-decided" choice, valid as any other, to cease existing.
**Insufficient cultural narrative** for dealing with the experiences of life, in any culture and circumstance, produces tension that can affect suicide rates. As Christianity wanes from it's dominant position as THE story of life in the west, nothing clear and singular fills its void. The very clear-pointing compass we thought gave us a sense of orientation now spins violently. We've sought this, purposely, finding our old story restricting and not helpful for finding our way, but this is arguably done in a great deal of ignorance as to why we chose that story in to first place. I contend that some of what we have shuffled off our shoulders -not necessarily in Christianity alone, but in many cultural traditions, perspectives, decorum- has been load-bearing in our civilization. But being enabled by parents of the baby-boom and onward, who just wanna give us the loving freedom their parents didn't/couldn't, very young, rash people have been given power that they've used decisively. Couple this "anything goes" ethic with the rapid changes that mass immigration and advancing technology bring, and you have very unsure people, to say the least. Being in a democracy and a meritocracy, these very unsure people are tasked with being very very sure about things. Faux pas and missteps are liable to get you called "racist" or "sexist". It's all highly demanding, and challenging to the identity, which is often very up-in-the-air. The stresses involved can affect suicide rates accordingly.
**White lamentation and guilt** is this final aspect I'll mention, which I'm defining as the sense that a white person has, individually, of sadness, compassion, empathy, etc. for those on Earth present and past, who have been hurt by European conquests and controversially termed civilizing missions. This can be a healthy sense of compassion and lamentation for the suffering of fellow humans, or a more toxic guilt experience in which the individual sees themselves and all living whites as no different that the conquistadors or Atlantic slave traders. Either one, though, can have predictable effects on suicide. And an interesting note on the same subject is not just suicide, but it also motivates some whites to either pledge to not give birth, or to only procreate with non-Europeans, which, evolutionarily, would be interesting to compare to the act of suicide, sharing the characteristic of "ending the genetic self" in one way or another.
I can't cite any of this for you, this is just a lot of reading and culture-watching distilled into what insight I think I grasp well enough for it to be responsible to pass on. Obviously much generalization has taken place for the sake of describing the trend in question, which I don't dispute on the grounds you offer it (though I'd like to see just how start the numbers are). But I figured I would give you *something* to chew on, rather than give you a frankly flippant and derogatory answer as I've seen elsewhere. Please forgive if my discussion of such a complex subject strayed into 6-year old language or older ;P
| [
"According to the \"Mapa da Violencia 2015\" report, the black population is the main victim of domestic violence and homicides in the country. The homicide rates of the white population have been falling (-9,8% between 2003 and 2013), while the homicide rates among black population keep rising (+54,2% between 2003... |
How much oxygen would you need to ignite the potentially highly reactive atmosphere of Titan? And how much energy would be released if a suicidal astronaut lit a match? | Atmospheric pressure on Titan is about 150 kPa. Acceleration due to gravity at Titan's surface is about 1.4 m/s^2, so the mass of a 1m^2 air column is about 100000kg. Titan has surface area of 8.3E7 km^2, so the mass of the atmosphere is about 8E18 kg. Assuming 1% methane by mass, that is 8E16 kg of methane, or at 16.05 g/mol, 5E18 moles of methane.
CH4 + 2O2 - > CO2 + 2H20
So you would need to bring along 10E18 moles of oxygen, with mass 3.2E17 kg, in order to combust all of the methane.
The enthalpy of combustion of methane is -891 kJ/mol at standard conditions. Titan does not have standard conditions, but using that enthalpy, 4.5E24 J would be released. This is about ten times the energy released by the impactor that killed the dinosaurs.
Edit: Underestimated energy by factor of 1000! | [
"In his monograph \"Project Apollo: The Tough Decisions\", Deputy Administrator Seamans wrote that NASA's worst mistake in engineering judgment was not to run a fire test on the command module before the plugs-out test. In the first episode of the 2009 BBC documentary series \"NASA: Triumph and Tragedy\", Jim McDiv... |
How did one join the ranks of Praetorian Guard, back in ancient Rome? | The Praetorians actually began their existence as the personal bodyguards of Republican generals; the name of this corps was the "cohors praetoria." Augustus took the men from this corps in order to form the modern image of the Praetorian Guard; as a result, Praetorians were initially a general's personal bodyguard, probably drawn from his best legionaries, and were then transformed into a large corps (most estimates stand at 10,000) that was also probably mostly drawn from provincial legions who had seen their fair share of combat.
Source: Sarah Bingham's *The Praetorian Guard: A History of Rome's Elite Special Forces* | [
"The Praetorian Guard was an elite unit of the Roman army formed by Augustus in 27 BC, with the specific function to serve as a bodyguard to the emperor and members of the imperial family. Much more than a guard however, the Praetorians also managed the day-to-day care of the city, such as general security and civi... |
The space program has used CO2 scrubbers for ~50 years. Why can't we use this same technology to help clean the atmosphere? | My understanding is that the production and recycling of CO2 scrubbers takes a significant amount of energy, greater than the amount of CO2 that is absorbed from the production of a similar amount of energy. IE it still leads to a net increase in CO2, it just decreases it locally. | [
"A concept to scrub CO2 from the breathing air is to use re-usable amine bead carbon dioxide scrubbers. While one carbon dioxide scrubber filters the astronaut's air, the other can vent scrubbed CO2 to the Mars atmosphere, once that process is completed another one can be used, and the one that was used can take a ... |
how is a game converted to a rom for emulation purposes? | A rom is just a copy of the media. In case of GC it's a copy of the data stored on the CD. Some roms are encrypted, like on the 3ds and you need to decrypt them before use on a device.
They're called ROMs because originally they were the *dumps* of Read Only Memory chips found in cartridges and arcade cabinets.
Today however, they are more akin to directory structures found when browsing a PC/Mac rather than binary dumps of a single chip. If you're emulating the GC for example, it's more appropriate to call the games you're emulating "images" - "disc images". | [
"Emulation is a strategy in digital preservation to combat obsolescence. Emulation focuses on recreating an original computer environment, which can be time-consuming and difficult to achieve, but valuable because of its ability to maintain a closer connection to the authenticity of the digital object. Emulation ad... |
Did the Allies in World War II ever entertain the idea of offering a conditional surrender to Nazi Germany before the end of the war? Do we know any details on what the conditions of these offers might have entailed? | The Allies had different goals of victory for the end of the war, so a discussion of conditional surrender has to take this into account. Churchill, coming from a more traditional British school of thought, was primarily focused on restoring the old European balance of powers system of international governance which relied on equilibrium. It would have seemed natural and logical to allow the Germans to negotiate a conditional surrender on the Western front while rebuilding the Western world (including Germany) to balance the ever growing Soviet Union. However, President Roosevelt had a colliding viewpoint. He instead imagined a 'new' world order, one that was based upon international harmony and cooperation rather than the somewhat anarchic balance of powers system. Kissinger quotes the US Secretary of State:
> ...there will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for allies, for balance of power, or any other of the special arrangements through which, in the unhappy past, the nations strove to safeguard their security or to promote their interests.
The balance of power and the new world order were in direct conflict with each other, and, as mentioned in /u/orincoro's comment, Churchill did not want to 'push his luck' with the American aid he was now dependant upon. Even in 1944, before the Americans had landed, Roosevelt was already expressing ideas associated with American isolationism, and regretting that America had to come to the aid of Europe:
> As I suggested before, I denounce and protest the paternity of Belgium, France and Italy. You really ought to bring up and discipline your own children. In view of the fact that they may be your bulwark in future days, you should at least pay for their schooling now!
Statements like these would have been extremely worrying to Churchill, who at this point was the head of a tired British war effort. He simply could not risk pressuring Roosevelt too hard at the risk of losing the war. In order for Roosevelt's vision of the Four Policemen to come to fruition, a complete removal of Hitler and disarmament of Germany was required. This put an enormous emphasis on an unconditional surrender from Nazi Germany.
Stalin's peace goals were instead based entirely on Realpolitik. The more land Stalin could acquire, the larger the security-belt or buffer zone would be to protect Russia. Roosevelt's unconditional surrender proposal was therefore very appealing since it would remove the Axis from peace negotiations entirely, allowing for a great deal of flexibility and exploitation at the negotiating table for Stalin.
---
Kissinger, Henry. "Three Approaches to Peace: Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill in World War II" in *Diplomacy*. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. | [
"On 8 May 1945, these arrangements were put into effect in full, notwithstanding that the only German parties to the signed surrender document had been the German High Command. The western Allies maintained that a functioning German state had already ceased to exist, and that consequently the surrender of the Germa... |
Were the Reserves for Native Americans in Canada Inspired by the Reservations in the United States? | Kwe,
Reserves in Canada were created before the first US reserves, even before the US themselves. The first to establish reserves were the French when what is now Eastern Canada was New France (1534-1763).
Most Indigenous peoples living on the territorie claimed by the French were nomadic or semi-nomadic. Algonquian peoples usually aggregated in villages at strategic locations during Summer. It was during that season that most missionary work was made (it was easier to find people to convert when they were in villages). Missionaries were mainly Jesuits. They translated the Bible, they studied the peoples, they learned the languages, etc. But, in their mind, a true Christian is sedentary. As such, they looked at the work of their brothers in the Spanish colonies. In South America, they created reductions were the ''Savages'' could be ''civilized''. So, they created the réduction of Sillery near Québec in 1638. It was the first reserve in today's Canada. This model was used again and again, in places like Oka or Sainte-Marie-des-Hurons.
With the British conquest, Catholicism was, for a short time, illegal. Furthermore, in the years after the conquest of New France, the Indigenous peoples were seen as a buffer to control colonists of the Thirteen Colonies, and after the independance of the US, of the Usanians. Most of the lands South of the Great Lakes were reserved for the Indians with the Royala Proclamation of 1763 and the Queec Act. The Royal Proclamation also enshrined the need to make treaties with the Indians before taking their lands. Things changed with the Western expansion. Indigenous peoples were now a problem and they created reserves. Canada inherited of this method and officialized it with the Indian Act (1876). This is one of the reasons why you see way more reserves in Western Canada than in Eastern Canada. Even though the creation of most reserves in the West were agreed upon with treaties, the legitimacy of the treaties can be argued.
The reserves were more peacuful integration with the Jesuits, as the French had relatively peaceful relations. The goal was to assimilate the ''Sauvages''. However, the British were far more violent. Sometimes, reserves were created after wars, other times, with economic, social or political pressures. But the Catholic Church (mostly French/French Canadian or Irish) participated in the creation and mangement of the reserves, so the Church was not that peaceful. Today, reserves are still created, but usually it is by the Courts forcing Canada to reserve some lands to Indigenous peoples.
In conclusion, Canada was not inspired by the US for the creation of reserves. They were reserves ultimately,inspired by the Spanish Jesuits. However, the process was similar to the US, as you had Spanish missions and more ''Anglo-Saxon'' reserves. | [
"Canada has numerous Indian reserves for its First Nations people, which were mostly established by the \"Indian Act\" of 1876 and have been variously expanded and reduced by royal commissions since. They are sometimes incorrectly called by the American term \"reservations\".\n",
"Another focus of the Canadian go... |
how can this book cost $7000? | I don't think this is the result of a runaway pricing algorithm, I think it is intentionally priced at this level.
Some companies or labs need to have reference materials; a chemical engineer may need to look up the official weight of a particular compound, or a structural engineer may need to look up the finer points of the behavior and properties of certain materials. Those sorts of books are constructed from hundreds of thousands of careful observations by scientists around the world and contain extremely precise data which only a relatively few people are interested in. This book has the title "Phase Diagrams, Crystallographic and Thermodynamic Data, Critically Evaluated by MSIT (Materials Science International Team)", and the Table of Contents is just a list of elements. I think that this is one such book, and it is something that an organization working with three-element alloys would need to have one of. Just one for the entire organization, but it is quite important to have.
So if you are building a $30 million dollar laboratory where you will be experimenting with various advanced materials, you would need to buy one of these books for reference. That is why it costs so much; it isn't for the consumption of individuals, but large organizations. | [
"The other seven authors to top one million in eBook sales sell their novels for upwards of $10.00. As Locke reported to the \"Daily Telegraph\" in 2011, \"I put the most famous authors in the world in the position of having to prove their books were ten times better than mine.\" At this price, the author earns 35%... |
why do objects in old cartoons that the characters interact with have distinctly different textures, colours, brightness, saturation, etc. than the background? | Because they're drawn separately on different cels.
In old cartoons, a background cel would be drawn and colored, and the foreground cels, containing everything that moves and is interacted with, are drawn and colored separately as well.
The cells were stacked and the entire thing was filmed, one frame at a time. | [
"Although the characters share some visual similarities with Japanese Anime characters and cartoons they have a distinctive design. They do not have legs, but instead they float, fly and hover. The color palette was designed specifically to appeal to younger children.\n",
"There is a special visual aspect in some... |
what makes the internet "fast lane" different than paying for faster shipping with the usps? | "Like paying for faster shipping with USPS" is what already exists - it's the pricing tiers you already get. $X/month for 10MBps, $Y/month for 20MBps, etc.
Internet "Fast lanes" or "paid prioritization" is *content*-based. It would be like the USPS starting up a competitor to Etsy (www._URL_0_ or something), then started charging much higher rates to ship anything bought off Etsy. People would start shopping at _URL_0_ because it'd be cheaper, and Etsy would be driven out of business. | [
"In April 2014, the FCC proposed a set of new regulations that, among other things, would allow for ISPs to levy charges on websites in exchange for faster connection speeds. The \"fast lane\", as the proposal was called, would prioritize that website's internet connection over those of other websites that did not ... |
Is there a "true" up and down in the universe? Our galaxy is flat, where is up and down in relation to the Earth? | There is not a true up and down in the universe. You can only infer an up or a down using reference; for example the earth rotates the Sun, you could define "Up" and "Down" using that reference to the earth, by defining the rotation as forward/backward and left/right axis. | [
"BULLET::::- 2000 — Data from several cosmic microwave background experiments give strong evidence that the Universe is \"flat\" (space is not curved, although space-time is), with important implications for the formation of large-scale structure\n",
"The shape of the Universe as described in Jainism is shown alo... |
why does chocolate in advent calendars and selection boxes not melt? | Depends on the ingredients-milk, wax, cocoa, etc. it just has a bit of a higher melting point. | [
"The fondant in the centre of After Eights is made from a stiff paste of common sugar, water, and a small amount of the enzyme invertase. This fondant can readily be coated with dark chocolate. After manufacture, the enzyme gradually splits the common sugar into the much more soluble sugars glucose and fructose, re... |
NSFW How did Ancient cultures deal with sex crimes? | I can comment on the issue of rape in ancient Greece. My main source being Lysias 1 in which Lysias (a logographer) writes a defence speech for Euphiletos who has just killed a man named Eratosthenes after catching him sleeping with his wife. Lysias was considered on of the greatest "lawyers" Athens had ever seen. Given that, remember that it would not be likely that a great lawyer as Lysias would use anything outside of social norms to defend his client. By this I mean he would only use principles that would appeal to the jury (white, Athenian citizens). In this defence speech there is a portion where Lysias writes:
[32] You hear, gentlemen, that it lays down that if anyone rapes a free man or child, he owes double the damages. If he rapes a woman, in those cases that carry the penalty of death, he is liable at the same rate. Thus, gentlemen, rapists are thought to deserve a lighter penalty than seducers, because the law condemned the latter to death, but assigned double the amount of the damages to the former.
This is in fact not true, as rapist have to pay double the fine of a seducer (someone who sleeps with your wife or concubine). But what is interesting here is that the social implications of what Lysias attempts to do. The idea of inheritance of land from father to son in ancient Greek culture is so engrained in society such that the paternity of a child is of outmost concern, i.e who the real father is or has the mother slept with another man. Lysias thinks that although the law gives rapists a harsher punishment, the social norms of society at the time believe that seducers (the people that ruin inheritance and debase society) are of more law breaking behaviour than rapist are. This idea is an interesting one as it pits social norms of the time against what the law actually says. We do not know if Lysias client was found guilty or not (although he did admit to the murder quite bluntly). You may also want to refer to Draco's homicide law which gives some exceptions as to when a man can kill another man. Note: I am not a historian, but I have taken numerous classical courses and am currently taking Ancient Crime and Punishment. | [
"In the Middle Assyrian Laws, sex crimes were punished identically whether they were homosexual or heterosexual. An individual faced no punishment for penetrating a cult prostitute, someone of an equal or lower social class, such as slaves, or someone whose gender roles were not considered solidly masculine. Such s... |
why do we rarely use the term "tens" but "dozens" is commonly used? | Base 12 counting. These days once we count up to ten we start again with a new set of ten. Hence ten, twenty, thirty, etc. This is called "base ten" counting.
In older counting systems, we used base twelve. Twenty would be "one dozen and eight" while 24 is two dozen, etc. This format still holds on in certain idioms, as does base 20 (four score and seven years ago - meaning 87 years ago)
Incidentally, base 12 is why we have "eleven" and "twelve", not "oneteen" and "twoteen" | [
"Both the Dozenal Society of America and the Dozenal Society of Great Britain promote widespread adoption of the base-twelve system. They use the word \"dozenal\" instead of \"duodecimal\" to avoid the more overtly base-ten terminology. The etymology of 'dozenal' is itself also an expression based on base-ten termi... |
[Biology] Does the vagina absorb any seminal fluids? | Most of them just find their way out shortly afterwards, thanks to gravity.
Most of the rest find their way out via regular discharge/menstruation.
I believe that the woman's white blood cells will attack and disassemble some if they are there too long. Not sure how much of the leftovers are flushed out (per point 2) vs. absorbed.
The point is that most of them are just ejected from the body rather than absorbed. | [
"The majority of the liquid in vaginal discharge is mucus produced by glands of the cervix. The rest is made up of transudate from the vaginal walls and secretions from glands (Skene's and Bartholin's). The solid components are exfoliated epithelial cells from the vaginal wall and cervix as well as some of the bact... |
i see many videos of people peacefully interacting with wild sea animals, from blue whales and manatees to orcas and white sharks. the same is not true for land animals. what makes sea animals, even big predators, seem so much more tolerant to human interaction than wild land animals? | Those animals tend to be large enough that they don't have natural predators. Being docile isn't an issue for their species. Something smaller like an otter on the other hand... | [
"Indirect human disturbance may also be a threat. While some populations tolerate small boats, most actively try to avoid ships. Whale-watching has become a booming activity in the St. Lawrence and Churchill River areas, and acoustic contamination from this activity appears to have an effect on belugas. For example... |
Why have countries prevented their citizens from leaving? (Russia, E. Germany, China,...) | The rationale was that people were treated very much like kids who could not be trusted to make the correct choices on their own.
Because free will was uncacceptable. Free will means that every person can make any decision (well, in the developed society of today there are some limits to this but generally there is quite a wide choice).
But those countries had one ruling political party which was considered infallible and always correct, and was supposed to create all the major decisions for the people. And thus a person had only one option - to follow what "the party" decided for them. In this case, the Party had decided that people should be loyal to their country and should not leave it.
And people were not trusted to simply go abroad because the ruling Party was afraid they may leak government secrets and important secret information to the "enemy". There was a strict vetting process involving checks and unreliable individuals were not allowed to go abroad (in case they decided to stay there and leak secrets).
| [
"Other countries, including most countries in Western Europe and China, permit (or in China's case require) citizens to utilise national identity cards to clear immigration when travelling between adjacent jurisdictions. As a consequence of awkward border situations created by the fall of the Soviet Union, certain ... |
Cold War Propaganda Posters? | You can find a good digital collection of propaganda posters from Mao-era China here: _URL_0_
The editor, Stefan Landsberger, is a really reputable historian. Each poster has an English translation and a little bit of historical context, too. There are a few from after Mao, such as Hua Guofeng, too. | [
"Propaganda during the Cold War was at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s in the early years of the Cold war. The United States would make propaganda criticizing and making fun of the enemy the Soviet Union. The propaganda was on movies, television, music, literature and art. The United States officials did not call i... |
How is mimicry/camouflage selected for, and how can it become so accurate? (Owl faces in moths/butterflies, walking sticks, leafy seadragons, etc) | Take your basic butterfly, add a pattern that varies with each individual, eat all the ones that look the least like the target pattern, and what's left over will have patterns that are less likely to be eaten. Repeat for generations and you get closer and closer to perfection. | [
"Camouflage relies on deceiving the cognition of the observer, such as a predator. Some camouflage mechanisms such as distractive markings likely function by competing for visual attention with stimuli that would give away the presence of the camouflaged object (such as a prey animal). Such markings have to be cons... |
if rat fleas are natural carriers of the plague, how come they don't transmit it anymore? | They do; there are between 1000 and 3000 cases of the plague reported annually. Rats just aren't as much of an urban epidemic as they used to be and the plague can be cured now. | [
"High rates of plague transmission have been associated with low rat abundance and high volume of flea vectors. Historically, rats who acted as hosts to the flea vector subsequently died once they were infected with plague. However, the organism evolved and scientists are now finding that rats are not dying from pl... |
Does velocity of sound waves in a medium vary by the frequency? | There is no frequency-dependence for the speed of sound traveling through an ideal gas, but at least in air there is a small (unnoticeable) frequency-dependence due to vibrational relaxation effects of nitrogen and oxygen. You can calculate the speed of sound through air at a given frequency with:
* (1/c_*0*_) - (1/c_*f*_) = ∑*_r_* (a*_r_*/2πf*_r_*)
* c_*0*_ = speed of sound with 0 frequency
* c_*f*_ = speed of sound at frequency f
* a*_r_* = attenuation coefficient
* f*_r_* = relaxation frequency
Howell, G. P., & Morfey, C. L. (1987). [Frequency dependence of the speed of sound in air](_URL_0_). The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 82(1), 375–376. doi:10.1121/1.395523 | [
"The speed of sound is variable and depends on the properties of the substance through which the wave is travelling. In solids, the speed of transverse (or shear) waves depends on the shear deformation under shear stress (called the shear modulus), and the density of the medium. Longitudinal (or compression) waves ... |
What sort of buildings would be found in a roman town? How would a hamlet, town and city differ regarding types if structures? | For a largish Roman city of the early Imperial period, you should imagine a "civic package" of buildings: a theater, an arena, a forum-basilica with temple, aqueducts, sewers, and a stadium. Not every city had every building: for example, in Britain it was very rare to have a temple connected to the forum, Carthage didn't have aqueducts until relatively late (but did have massive cisterns), in Syria everything can be kind of weird, arenas are relatively rare in Greece, etc. Starting in the third century or so city walls and elaborate gates become more common, which used to be connected to the turmoil of the day but an equally good explanation is that walls were traditionally a privilege granted to *municipia* and so were an important status symbol--likely either factor played a role depending on the specific situation of the city.
Small towns are rather more complicated because it is rather common to define a "small town" as essentially a settlement without the civic package, and frequently without planned out grid streets. Some archaeologists use complicated and rather arbitrary numbers games to make the distinction eg, (a city is a settlement with more than x inhabitants), some prefer to use administrative distinctions (city's have major administrative functions) and some simply wing it and don't worry about coming up with rigorous distinctions. It is not terribly uncommon to find a small town without much in the way of civic structures at all, on the other hand, there are small towns in North Africa with extremely sophisticated and elaborate hydrological structures. So, again, it depends.
A hamlet, more or less by definition, its basically a small collection of domestic and agricultural structures with no civic buildings. They can be extremely complicated--are we looking at a hamlet? Agricultural sheds? A single house with dispersed structures? Would one family or multiple families live here? We can't really know. Trying to recover the Roman peasant is increasingly popular in Roman archaeology, however, so perhaps in a decade or so there will be a better answer. | [
"Roman towns or settlements were conceived as images of the imperial capital in miniature. The construction of public buildings was carried out by the curator operatum and were run directly by the supreme municipal magistrates.\n",
"The densely inhabited town, built with stone, retains its medieval aspect; the to... |
how does basic circuitry (like in a calculator) perform coding or mathematical function? | Is done in layers. Each layer adds complexity.
Let's look at three layers:
- Transistors
- Logic gates
- Logic circuits
The key element in these kinds of circuits are **transistors**. They work like tiny little switches.
By putting a few transistors together, it's possible to make basic **logic gates**. [This website](_URL_1_) explains how this is done, and shows the circuit diagram for a NAND gate.
Once you've built some logic gates, you then bolt these together to perform logical functions, by making a **logic circuit**. This takes a little bit more explaining. For example, to add two numbers:
(I'm going to assume that:
- you have a good understanding of binary
- you understand the basics of logic gates
If that's not the case, let me know.)
Starting with the least significant bit, we have two inputs, let's call them A and B. And we have two outputs - the least significant bit of our final output, and also a carry bit which will get added onto the next bit to the left. We can make a table of all the possible outcomes:
A B Out Carry
----------------------
0 0 0 0
0 1 1 0
1 0 1 0
1 1 0 1
Now, we can look at that table, and write logical equations for the output bit and the carry bit:
Out = A XOR B
Carry = A AND B
That's the first bit done. The other bits are a little more complex, because they have three inputs each - A, B and the Carry bit from the previous bit. But using the same principle, you can work out similar logical equations for all the other bits.
Then you put them all together in a logic circuit. [Here](_URL_0_) is a circuit which adds together two numbers, each of 3 bits. The inputs are on the left - three switches on the left hand side for the first input (least significant bit at the top), and three switches to the right of that for the second input. On the right hand side are four light bulbs for the output. You can see a wire that goes from the top part of the circuit to the middle part, and another that goes from the middle part to the bottom part. These are the carry bits. (Each of them splits into two, because the carry bit is used in two separate places in the next part of the equations.)
| [
"In computer science, function composition is an act or mechanism to combine simple functions to build more complicated ones. Like the usual composition of functions in mathematics, the result of each function is passed as the argument of the next, and the result of the last one is the result of the whole.\n",
"I... |
why do the germans have the 'german discipline'? | It's really more of a way of perceiving your own country. Germany had a rather troubled past, which makes pure patriotism often hard to justify, so we instead cling to virtues like discipline, being on time, organization, that sort of things.
Of course, that never really translates into reality as much as you'd like. | [
"While this sounds like discipline is strict in German Gymnasia, in many cases, the official rules are watered down and ignored, except when school officials are watching. For example, while teachers and upper-class students are not allowed to call one another by their first names, in some cases, they do. Relations... |
does computer/laptop grow old? or they just can't keep up with current software? | Unless you're talking about games with big resource requirements or heavy duty processing tools (like Adobe Premiere), they should keep up with software for quite a long time. A lot of desktop/laptop machines get bogged down over time with stuff that has been installed on them which add to their slowness by putting their own doo-dads in the startup sequence (stuff that always loads every time you boot).
I'd bet if you cloned your hard drive right when you got your computer (and put nothing on it), and then put it back in a couple of years later and compared the performance, you'd notice it's a lot faster now that you've put a hard drive on there that doesn't have all the clutter that the existing drive has accumulated. | [
"The decades of development means that most people already own desktop computers that meet their needs and have no need of buying a new one merely to keep pace with advancing technology. Notably the successive release of new versions of Windows (Windows 95, 98, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and so on) had been drivers for th... |
what are ticks and why are they so bad? | Ticks are a small bug that feed of the blood of animals and humans. They carry diseases, specifically Lyme Disease. They can be difficult to remove depending on where they attach to the host. | [
"Ticks are parasitic, and some transmit micro-organisms and parasites that can cause diseases in humans, while the saliva of a few species can directly cause tick paralysis if they are not removed within a day or two.\n",
"Ticks are invertebrate animals in the phylum Arthropoda, and are related to spiders. Ticks ... |
radio frequencies | AM radio has a longer wavelength than FM. FM has cleaner sound, but a smaller effective range, while AM can be more easily interrupted, which leads to more static, however it can travel much farther than FM frequencies. | [
"Radio frequencies are generated and processed within very many functional units such as transmitters, receivers, computers, and televisions to name a few. Radio frequencies are also applied in carrier current systems including telephony and control circuits.\n",
"Radio frequency (RF) is the oscillation rate of a... |
why does gravity cause planets to be attracted to other planets and the sun? | It might help to think about this the other way around. It's not that something called 'gravity' existed and one day it decided to start pulling on planets. It's rather that we humans realized that we are pulled down toward the earth and decided to use the word 'gravity' to describe that. Later we realized that everything is pulled toward everything else but it's not a very strong pull so we only notice it when it involves really big things like planets, and also it works over great distances. | [
"The Earth, among other planets, orbits the Sun because the Sun exerts a gravitational pull that acts as a centripetal force, holding the Earth to it, which would otherwise go shooting off into space. If the Sun's pull is considered an action, then Earth simultaneously exerts a reaction as a gravitational pull on t... |
Time dilation at absolute zero. | In principle the kinetic motion of gasses time dilates the molecules.
Consider a gas of tritium, or heavy hydrogen, which is radioactive with a half-life of 12.32 years or 4,500 +/- 8 days.
At room temperature, the average molecule is moving at a speed of 1700 m/s relative to the lab frame of reference. So the time dilation factor is 1.0000000000160778. This will increase the half life (as measured in the lab) by two seconds. Since the tritium is decaying more slowly, any glow from a phosphorescent material would in principle be slightly dimmer than if the tritium was near absolute zero.
However, this effect is too subtle to measure. The uncertainty on the half-life of tritium is 8 days, so the addition of 2 seconds is impossible to determine with current capabilities.
Basically, gasses are moving very slow at room temperature relative to the speed of light, and any time dilation effects are likely too subtle to measure. | [
"In special relativity, time dilation is most simply described in circumstances where relative velocity is unchanging. Nevertheless, the Lorentz equations allow one to calculate proper time and movement in space for the simple case of a spaceship which is applied with a force per unit mass, relative to some referen... |
are there any well documented nutritional differences between raw, unrefined sugar, cane sugar, white sugar, natural sugars in fruits etc? do our bodies handle refined white sugar differently than the "natural" stuff? | Yes, there are differences, because there are different kinds of sugar. The most common two you'll see are sucrose (table sugar) and fructose (corn syrup, most fruits, honey). Fructose is sweeter, but also processed faster by your body, and as a result may cause larger blood sugar swings. | [
"From a chemical and nutritional point of view, white sugar does not contain - in comparison to brown sugar - some minerals (such as calcium, potassium, iron and magnesium) present in molasses, even if the quantities contained in brown sugar are so small to be actually not significant. The only detectable differenc... |
why is it so bad to turn off a computer by the physical on/off button? | Depends what you mean. If you press the button and let the system go through its shutdown process everything should be fine. If you hold it for a few seconds and force the system to just shut down in the middle of what its doing you risk data corruption. | [
"The screen turns itself off when a person is on a call. This is to prevent the screen accepting unwanted inputs from the user's face when they are making a call, but it also requires the user to turn the screen back on if they want to use the screen. Removing the stylus when in a phone call both turns on the scree... |
Do any of the stars in the centre of our galaxy harbour planets? | There aren't many collisions in the centre of the galaxy - the stars are still plenty far apart from each other. You do get some mergers in places like dense globular clusters, but not all that many. However, rather than direct collisions, the gravity of a star coming even vaguely close may disrupt the orbits of the planets and throw them out of the system. So you might not expect many planets in this inner region.
In terms of explosions - in the Milky Way, much of the new star formation is going on in the spiral arms, so the central bulge tends to have older dimmer calmer stars, while the spiral arms have more big bright young stars that burn themselves out quickly and go supernova.
But you do have a higher intensity of background radiation because of the large density of stars, which may have some effect on life and evolution - although it's not completely clear which way this would go. | [
"Somewhere deep within the Andromeda Galaxy lies the Algol Star System. The parent star, Algol (referred to as \"Algo\" by this point in the timeline), has three planets orbiting about it. First is Palm (\"Palma\"), the home of the government. Governors, treasurers, and great thinkers dwell here in great ivory towe... |
In the past, farmers were far more numerous than smiths, so why is Smith a more common name than Farmer? | hi, there's always room for more discussion on this, but thought you might be interested in a couple of earlier posts about "Smith"; the first one does discuss "Smith" vs "Farmer" also
* [Why is Smith the most common surname?](_URL_0_)
* [Why are there so many "Smiths" out there? Were there just a shitload of blacksmiths in Medieval times or did the blacksmiths just produce a prodigious amount of progeny? OR Why is Smith such a common surname?](_URL_1_) | [
"There is also a geographical connection between the Smiths and the Cowderys. During the 1790s, both Joseph Smith, Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith, and two of Cowdery's relatives were living in Tunbridge, Vermont.\n",
"As for Casler's third possible explanation for nominative determinism, genetics, researchers Voracek, R... |
why is all glass not safety glass? | for general use, cost.
car windshield glass is laminated. it's actually two pieces of glass with a clear glue in the middle. it doesn't shatter into million pieces when it breaks. windshield glass also needs to be mostly distortion free. you'll note that windshields are bent, but when you look thru them, the image is not bent.
car side window glass is not laminated, but it's still special glass. it's tempered. it's stronger than just "normal" glass. but it shatters into many pieces when it breaks.
then there's glass made for ever other specialty application.
optical glass doesn't need to be super strong or not shatter. it needs to be very clear and very distortion free.
gorilla glass is very scratch and shatter resistant. and very pricey.
UV protection glass filters out UV light.
residential window glass is treated for filtering our both UV and IR light. | [
"Safety glass is glass with additional safety features that make it less likely to break, or less likely to pose a threat when broken. Common designs include toughened glass (also known as tempered glass), laminated glass, wire mesh glass (also known as wired glass) and engraved glass. Wire mesh glass was invented ... |
why doesnt apple make computers specifically for video games? | There are a few things that limit apples gaming potential.
1) Apple OS is not supported by most games. So a lot of games, especially new games, won't work at all on a Mac.
2) Power vs. Quality - we can debate all day about the quality of a apple computer. What can be said is that dollar for dollar, a Mac is nothing compared to a PC in terms of raw power. For the price of a decent Mac $1500 - $2500, you can build a PC with 2 - 3 times to raw power of that Mac.
3) Control - a PC power user has a lot more control over their machine on windows or Linux than does that same person on a Mac. This includes both over the hardware and over the software running the machine. When gaming, more control is always better. | [
"Apple has at times attempted to market the platform for gaming. In 1996, they released a series of game-enabling APIs called Game Sprockets. In April 1999, Steve Jobs gave an interview with the UK-based \"Arcade\" magazine to promote the PowerPC G3-based computers Apple were selling with then new ATI Rage 128 grap... |
Why do chefs wear those tall white hats? | The traditional chef's hat or a "toque blanches" was developed in 16th century France as a means of symbolising your status in the kitchen with chef's hats being the highest. The pleats in the hat were also a way of showing how experienced a chef was. Traditionally, the toques had a hundred pleats for senior chefs, some still have a hundred but it has become less common in modern kitchens. They are generally white as it is supposed to denote cleanliness and hygiene.
Interestingly, the hundred pleats are representative of the hundred ways a chef can cook an egg.
| [
"In more traditional restaurants, especially traditional French restaurants, the white chef’s coat is standard and considered part of a traditional uniform and as a practical chef's garment. Most serious chefs wear white coats to signify the importance and high regard of their profession. The thick cotton cloth pro... |
Does a power strip split up the power going to each device, or does it maintain the same power as plugging straight into the wall? | It simply distributes the wall power to more outlets. It may have a surge protector to avoid overload, or other type of protection (e.g., battery backup) - but beyond that, it is not 'splitting' anything.
This makes logical sense -- everything you plug into it requires 110 AC (USA). If it was 'splitting the power' devices would not receive enough to operate. | [
"A power strip (also known as an extension block, power board, power bar, plug board, pivot plug, trailing gang, trailing socket, plug bar, trailer lead, multi-socket, multi-box, super plug, multiple socket, multiple outlet, polysocket and by many other variations) is a block of electrical sockets that attaches to ... |
What do we know about childhoods of The Beatles' members? | *To be sung to the tune of the [Crash Test Dummies' 'Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm'](_URL_0_)*:
Oo-once there was this boy^1 who
Grew up with his Aunt and never knew his Mum^2
And wh-ee-en she finally came back
She got run over by a policeman^3
It really might explain why
The kid could be soooooo meeeaaann^4
& nbsp;
Mmm mmm mmm mmm
& nbsp;
Once there was this kid^5 who
Did quite well at school and was on track to be a teacher^6
But wh-ee-en his mother Mary passed away^7
He began to hang with the wrong crowd^8
He couldn't quite explain it
He just wanted to rooooock and rooooll
& nbsp;
Mmm mmm mmm mmm
Mmm mmm mmm mmm
& nbsp;
But both John and Paul were glad
Cos one kid had it worse than that
& nbsp;
Cause then there was this boy^9 who
Grew up in the shittiest slum in Liverpool^10
And whe-en he was growing up
He spent years sick in hospital^11
He couldn't quite explain it^12
He just wanted to play the drums^13
& nbsp;
Mmm mmm mmm mmm^14
Mmm mmm mmm mmm
& nbsp;
...
& nbsp;
Footnotes:
1. John Winston Lennon
2. Lennon's father was at sea in the merchant navy when he was born, and by the time Lennon was born, his mother Julia was 'living in sin' with someone else (John Dykins), and Lennon was sleeping in the same bed as Julia and John Dykins. After Julia's sister Mimi complained to Social Services about this situation, Julia gave up John to Mimi, who was childless, and not by choice.
3. Julia became more of a part of Lennon's life again when he was a teenager - to him she seemed almost like a cool older sister - but passed away when she was hit by a car in July 1958 driven by an off-duty policeman near Mimi's house.
4. Everyone in the Beatles' circle lived in fear of Lennon's mouth - it was almost certainly why Pete Best basically only turned up to gigs and left straight afterwards when he was in the band, for example.
5. Sir James Paul McCartney
6. Unlike Lennon, he passed the 11-Plus exam (designed to detect students destined for university), and attended the Liverpool Institute, a grammar school. His family expected him to become a teacher.
7. Mary McCartney, a nurse who actually was the primary breadwinner of the family, passed away in 1957, when Paul was 14. She and Paul's father had kept her illness something of a secret, and so it was a great shock to Paul when she passed away quite suddenly.
8. i.e., John Lennon, who was universally hated by his friends' parents
9. Richard Starkey, aka Ringo Starr
10. John grew up in Aunt Mimi and Uncle George's very solidly middle class house (when I visited as part of a Beatles tour in Liverpool, I was actually impressed by how nice it looked). Paul grew up in government housing, but then reasonably new and spacious government housing on what was then a fancy, country-ish council estate. Ringo - known as Ritchie as a kid - grew up in the Dingle, which was widely considered the worst slum in Liverpool. This is likely why he contracted tuberculosis as a teenager in the 1950s. Like John, he had very little contact with his father, who preferred to go drinking rather than bring up his son.
11. At age six, Ringo contracted a very serious case of peritonitis, and was in a coma for the best part of two weeks; his mother thought he was going to die. He was in hospital for a year recovering. In 1953 he came down with tuberculosis and was confined to a hospital sanatorium for months.
12. Ringo's sicknesses and the general desultory atmosphere of the Dingle, living with parents who he later said were basically alcoholics, meant that he was actually illiterate at age eight, and only became somewhat literate because a neighbour tutored him. After returning home from the sanatorium he didn't bother to go back to school
13. It was at the sanatorium that he discovered his great love for the drums, playing in a band of kids at the sanatorium.
14. Sorry, George fans, there's only three verses in 'Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm'.
For further reading: Bob Spitz's *The Beatles* and especially Mark Lewisohn's *Tune In* are the books that go into the most detail on their early lives; both books have a good sense of social context and Lewisohn especially is good at explaining their lives as they were rather than with their not-necessarily-destined future careers in mind. | [
"The Beatles appeared in Charly's life when he was thirteen. Having previously only been exposed to classical music and folk, he would describe the Beatles as \"classical music from Mars\". In high school he met Carlos Alberto \"Nito\" Mestre and the two fused their bands to give birth to Sui Generis.\n",
"Beatle... |
how does light move forever (in a hypothetical pure vacuum)? wouldn't that take infinite energy? | Newton's First Law: "An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."
Anything (light, planets, asteroids, spaceships) will move forever at a constant speed in a pure vacuum. It takes no energy at all to keep moving -- it requires energy only to change either speed or direction. | [
"Another objection by Olum and Everett is that even if Mallett's choice of spacetime were correct, the energy required to twist spacetime sufficiently would be huge, and that with lasers of the type in use today the ring would have to be much larger in circumference than the observable universe. At one point Mallet... |
We often cite Rome as an example of a great empire. At Rome's height, what did Romans cite as an example of a great empire? | This is a really complicated question on one level, if we are to get too deep into the various ideological constructs that surrounded the Roman notion of an "Empire" was. But there is at least one polity that I can point to some direct attestations of as being described as vast and powerful (if not in all other respects admirable): what we today call the Achaemenid Empire.
Plutarch's Life of Artaxerxes:
> 6.1 Nevertheless, restless and factious men thought that affairs demanded Cyrus, a man who had a brilliant spirit, surpassing skill in war, and great love for his friends; and that **the magnitude of the empire required a king of lofty purpose and ambition**.
> 20.1 Nevertheless, he could not capture them, but though they had lost Cyrus their leader and their own commanders, they rescued themselves from his very palace, as one might say, thus proving clearly to the p175 world that **the empire of the Persians and their king abounded in gold and luxury** and women, but in all else was an empty vaunt.
> 28.3 However, it was **the greatness of the empire** and the fear which Dareius felt towards Ochus that paved the way for Teribazus although, since Aspasia had been taken away, the Cyprus-born goddess of love was not altogether without influence in the case.
(The term translated "empire" here is _basileia_)
These discussions - including Plutarchs' moralistic remarks on the vauntness of the polity beyond its vast wealth - tie into something I have previously argued. Namely, that there seems to be a thread starting in the Classical era and carried on through authors like Plutarch and Arrian, that sees the ancient kings of Persia as highly emblematic of the institution of _monarchy_. You can see this among other things in the frequent usage of titles such as simply "the King" (ho basileus) or "the Great King" (ho megas basileus) rather than "the King of Persia" even in circumstances where it would not necessarily be unambiguous, something that I know is remarked on in the Landmark edition of Arrian's Anabasis. There's a sort of preoccupation with the quaintness of court ritual and intrigue (real or otherwise) evident from Ctesias' _Persica_ (4th c BC) and carried on by authors like Diodoros and Plutarch. Here's one example of Diodorus emphasizing the vast reach of the King's dominion:
> 22.1 King Artaxerxes had learned some time before from Pharnabazus that Cyrus was secretly collecting an army to lead against him, and when he now learned that he was on the march, he summoned his armaments from every place to Ecbatana in Media. 2 When the contingents from **the Indians and certain other peoples were delayed because of the remoteness of those regions**, he set out to meet Cyrus with the army that had been assembled
And in another part of his World History, Diodoros discusses the court intrigue of Persia:
> 17.5.3 As our narrative is now to treat of the kingdom of the Persians, we must go back a little to pick up the thread. While Philip was still king, Ochus15 ruled the Persians and oppressed his subjects cruelly and harshly. Since his savage disposition made him hated, the chiliarch Bagoas, a eunuch in physical fact but a militant rogue in disposition, killed him by poison administered by a certain physician and placed upon the throne the youngest of his sons, Arses...
The story of Bagoas seems to have been popular, and it suggests to me an idea of how these authors viewed Persia - it was vast and powerful, but still "weak" in that it was subject to the whims and intrigues of its decadent, effete court life. This particular narrative ends with the appointment of Dareios III, the last Great King and one with a much weaker claim to the throne than his predecessors, who ends up turning the tables on Bagoas and killing him. On a side note, Arrian cites a supposed letter by Alexander claiming that in fact Dareios III had had his brief predecessor Artaxerxes IV murdered, which is another example of the predominant relevance these anecdotes had in the minds of the authors who kept them alive (as opposed to mundane matters of administration and regular rule in the dominions subject to the Persian monarch, which they appear to have been pretty uninterested in!)
Unfortunately, there are only a few major stories that get repeated over and over with slight variations by Roman-era authors (mainly the life of Cyrus the Great, Xerxes' invasion, Cyrus the Younger's rebellion, Alexander's invasion), so we only get a limited view, and it is not really clear to me how Roman subjects would relate the Kingdom of the Persians to the polity they themselves lived under. However, even from these few examples, we have some idea: these authors clearly possessed an awareness of the Persian Empire as an incredibly vast and powerful dominion that had existed well before Rome's rise to prominence in later centuries, and still regarded the tales of its court intrigue and the character of its rulers as relevant and instructive topics of discussion. | [
"The Roman Empire reached its greatest geographical extent under Trajan (r. 98–117), who ruled a prosperous state that stretched from Armenia to the Atlantic. The Empire had large numbers of trained, supplied, and disciplined soldiers, as well as a comprehensive civil administration based in thriving cities with ef... |
why are gas companies allowed to put of ethanol inside of gasoline to make it burn faster | Well, This is not so much on why they are allowed but more on how they can get gasoline to produce less polluting residue.
> "Most of ethanol blending into U.S. motor gasoline occurs to meet the requirements of the 1990 Clean Air Act (RFG Fuel) and the Renewable Fuel Standard set forth in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007."
This was part of a push from ethanol producer ( corn states) and politicians in office to reduce emissions and foreign oil dependency. | [
"Ethanol can be used in petrol engines as a replacement for gasoline; it can be mixed with gasoline to any percentage. Most existing car petrol engines can run on blends of up to 15% bioethanol with petroleum/gasoline. Ethanol has a smaller energy density than that of gasoline; this means it takes more fuel (volume... |
Does the amount of dark energy in the universe change? | Yes, the density of dark energy is constant, which means that the total amount of dark energy is proportional to the size of the universe.
Dark matter is very different, is works just like regular matter with respect to expansion; it's not affected.
The above also means that conservation of energy doesn't hold in the universe as a whole. | [
"Dark energy is broadly similar to inflation and is thought to be causing the expansion of the present-day universe to accelerate. However, the energy scale of dark energy is much lower, 10 GeV, roughly 27 orders of magnitude less than the scale of inflation.\n",
"Assuming that the standard model of cosmology is ... |
What sort of electrical potential differences exist between objects in space? | One issue is that space is filled with plasma as well as gas. Plasma exhibits a phenomenon called screening, where a charged object attracts a layer of oppositely charged ions around it, called an electric double layer. At a certain distance (called the Debye length), there is zero net charge enclosed so it is said that electrostatic interactions are screened. This also happens in ionic fluids in addition to plasmas: DNA is strongly charged but the cellular environment screens it, because DNA has that few-nanometer double layer around it. So if stars or planets were charged, it is possible they would not attract each other because of screening from the plasma. I don't know enough about space plasma physics to answer it fully though. | [
"Space contains regions with varying concentrations of charged particles such as the plasma sheet, and a static charge builds up as the spacecraft moves between these regions, or as the electrical potential varies within such a region.\n",
"If an oscillating electrical current is applied to a conductive structure... |
are there any "good" diseases that can make feel more strong, healthy or happy? | I'm not a doctor but i think a Disease is the negative affect of a bacteria or virus. We have hundreds -if not millions- of bacterias in our bodies that help us. So there are good bacteria that help us stay healthy. | [
"Research suggests that probing a patient's happiness is one of the most important things a doctor can do to predict that patient's health and longevity. In health-conscious modern societies, most people overlook the emotions as a vital component of one's health, while over focusing on diet and exercise. According ... |
How do animals with fur and researchers in the arctic get vitamin D? | Animals with fur can still make Vitamin D via UV dependent pathways, it's just less efficient because the fur blocks some of the sunlight. Fish are excellent dietary sources of Vitamin D and much of the non-human arctic wildlife eats fish or other aquatic wildlife that is obtaining Vitamin D from the aquatic food chain.
As for the humans in arctic regions, Vitamin D supplementation and dietary sources rich in Vitamin D are essential during the periods of the year where there is a little to no UV rays.
I know in certain regions of Alaska that have prolonged periods of darkness, tanning beds are popular in the winter. | [
"In birds and fur-bearing mammals, fur or feathers block UV rays from reaching the skin. Instead, vitamin D is created from oily secretions of the skin deposited onto the feathers or fur, and is obtained orally during grooming. However, some animals, such as the naked mole-rat, are naturally cholecalciferol-deficie... |
What is the origin of the "International Jewish Conspiracy"? Have the rise of international banking families as Rothschilds fueled the belief that "Jews rule the World"? | The origins of the "international Jewish conspiracy" can be traced to the Middle Ages. The stereotype of Jews working with money has very real foundations in the ways in which Jews were generally forced to make their living in Medieval Europe. Jews were subject to a whole host of laws and decrees which limited the ways in which they could earn a living. Among these restrictions included prohibitions against owning land, joining artisan’s guilds, selling new merchandise, and even working on Sundays and Christian holidays. These laws were not limited the Medieval period and can be found in the Early Modern Period as well. Frederick II of Prussia issued a charter in 1750 that placed these very restrictions on the Jews of his kingdom.
On its own commercial business was generally not considered troublesome and most Jews made a meager living in some sort of mercantile business. What most non-Jews in European society found morally suspect was moneylending; a profession that many Jews were forced into by circumstance. Since the Middle Ages Jews had been the main source of financial credit to the European populace due to religious prohibitions against Christians participating in usury. Jews were not alone in practicing moneylending, of course Christians engaged in the practice as well. However, they rarely received the same levels of disdain that the Jewish moneylenders did.
So why could Jews not become artisans? Well in order to be an artisan (in the city anyway) one generally needed to join a guild. Guilds, being religious organizations, almost always forbade Jewish members so Jews resorted to forming their own, such as the Barber’s Guild at Krakow in the early seventeenth century. However, Jewish guilds often played no significant role in the economic lives of their members and quite often found themselves in competition with Christian guilds. With farming and crafting out of reach for most Jews, peddling second-hand goods was the most readily accessible form of work available to Jewish men.
At this point, I will focus on late 18th - 19th century France, since I am most comfortable speaking about that region. Most Jewish merchants conducted business with Christian peasants in the countryside and at the marketplace in the cities and many had amassed enough money to add loan-making to their résumé. These Jewish moneylenders played an important role in the rural economy of northeastern France. In a society with little to no banks, Jews provided a ready source of agricultural credit to the non-Jewish peasants. As a result of this the Jewish community was often blamed for the indebtedness of the Alsatian peasantry and their image as recalcitrant and parasitic businessmen persisted throughout the nation. The combined economic tensions and underlying religious animosity fueled popular hatred and distrust that bubbled under the surface of French society.
You mention the Rothschilds, and I am glad you did. The French branch of the Rothschild family heavily invested in building Paris during the Second Industrial Revolution and many Jewish investors poured money into many of the volatile new industries of the industrial revolution (and made a lot of money in the process). Jews in France found themselves integrating more easily into French society at a time when Jewish and Non-Jewish French people were asking themselves if the Jews could in fact be Jewish and French (This was a debate happening across Western and Central Europe). In my opinion, the point when the "International Jewish Conspiracy" hit French society was the failure of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War and the economic recession that followed. Anti-Semitic publications such as Edouard Drumont's *La France Juive* emerged and were very popular (100,000 copies were sold in its first year of publication). Antisemitic publications alleged that Jews across Europe were more loyal to each other than to the nations in which they lived. In *La France Juive*, Jews are portrayed as "Christ killers, economic vampires, subhumans, masters of France, reptiles dripping with slime and engorged with their victims blood." [Simon Shama, *The Story of the Jews* (New York: Harper Collins, 2017), 640] The Dreyfus Affair later cemented the idea for the anti-Semites of France that Jews were not loyal citizens and were internationalists. Here are some images published by *La Libre Parole* in the late 1890s depicting common anti-semitic tropes. [Here](_URL_1_) [Here](_URL_2_) and [Here](_URL_3_)
Admittedly I am less knowledgeable about the impact of *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion* and would defer to someone more informed on the subject. I can say that it was widely popular and the themes written in it reinforced many of the Antisemitic ideas that were already present in European society. Daniel Pipes writes in *Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From*:
> The great importance of The Protocols lies in its permitting antisemites to reach beyond their traditional circles and find a large international audience, a process that continues to this day. The forgery poisoned public life wherever it appeared; it was "self-generating; a blueprint that migrated from one conspiracy to another." The book's vagueness—almost no names, dates, or issues are specified—has been one key to this wide-ranging success. The purportedly Jewish authorship also helps to make the book more convincing. Its embrace of contradiction—that to advance, Jews use all tools available, including capitalism and communism, philo-Semitism and antisemitism, democracy and tyranny—made it possible for The Protocols to reach out to all: rich and poor, Right and Left, Christian and Muslim, American and Japanese.
Other sources:
The Jew in the Medieval World A Sourcebook: 315-1791, ed. Mark Saperstein (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1999)
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"Contemporary conspiracy theorists, who hew to theories centered on the Bilderberg Group and an alleged impending New World Order, often draw upon older concepts found in the Jewish-Masonic conspiracy theory, frequently blaming the Rothschild family or \"international bankers\". Because of the use of themes and tro... |
What evidence is there that electrons literally orbit the nucleus? | They aren't, at least not in the same way the Earth orbits the Sun. It's taught as such because it's a comforting inaccuracy that still allows students of chemistry or physics to make many physically meaningful calculations without mucking about with the insanity that is quantum mechanics.
Electrons are a smear of probability whose overall 'shape' of the cloud is defined by the quantum states it occupies. We know this to be the case because it's possible to directly probe atomic structures and make very precise measurements of energy and mass. If you're more interested in how the basic structure of atoms was discovered than I invite you to read upon Rutherford's now-famous gold foil experiment and it's descendants. These experiments solidified the notion that atoms had an extremely small positively-charged core and and nebulous negatively-charged outer structure. | [
"Electrons in an atom are sometimes described as \"orbiting\" its nucleus, following an early conjecture of Niels Bohr (this is the source of the term \"orbital\"). However, electrons don't actually orbit nuclei in any meaningful sense, and quantum mechanics are necessary for any useful understanding of the electro... |
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