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Were presidents Garfield and McKinley "sainted" after their assassinations in the same way as Lincoln and Kennedy? | Garfield was already a beloved national hero due to his service in the American Civil War. He was only president for a few months before his assassination.
Source: Destiny of the Republic
That being said, I believe his reputation has actually suffered due to his assassination. He wasn't in office long enough to create any sweeping legislative changes like Kennedy or Lincoln, so there is less memory of his achievements. Any that were made have certainly not been as long lasting.
I made short write up of it here as well. _URL_0_ | [
"President McKinley was enjoying great popularity as he began his second term, but it would be cut short. In September 1901, while attending an exposition in Buffalo, New York, McKinley was shot by an anarchist. He was the third President to be assassinated, all since the Civil War. Vice President Theodore Roosevel... |
how does this "cure" for tinnitus work? | Tinnitus isn't fully understood, but one of the hypothesis for its cause include a problem in the amplifier part of our ear.
Our ears are pretty sophisticated, and including in them essentially a biological amplifier which, when there's no ambient sound around, increases sensitivity so that we can pick up quiet sounds, but when there's a lot of ambient noise tamps back on the sensitivity so that we're not overwhelmed.
A problem with that leads to what is essentially feedback hum.
I would imagine that this little trick helps to properly calibrate this system for at least a short time, eliminating the feedback. | [
"If there is an underlying cause, treating it may lead to improvements. Otherwise, the primary treatment for tinnitus is talk therapy, sound therapy, or hearing aids. There are no effective medications or supplements that treat tinnitus.\n",
"The best supported treatment for tinnitus is a type of counseling calle... |
what is that line in the roof of your mouth and what is it for? | You mean the ridge on your palate that runs from front to back? That's called the palatine raphe. It's just where the 2 halves of our face meet. When we're embryos, our faces are 2 separate halves that sort of fold in and meet in the middle. The palatine raphe is just where the bone and soft tissue of the mouth meet and fuse. Sometimes it doesn't quite close all the way and you can end up with a cleft palate or a cleft lip. | [
"The roof of the mouth is termed the palate and it separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity. The palate is hard at the front of the mouth since the overlying mucosa is covering a plate of bone; it is softer and more pliable at the back being made of muscle and connective tissue, and it can move to swallow fo... |
Are lightnings three-dimensional or two-dimensional? | The shape you are looking for is ["dendritic"](_URL_1_). That's greek for tree-like, and it is the term used for anything that branches (crystals, nerve cells, lightning strikes, fractures, and so on).
As has already been mentioned, lightning typically follows a complex 3D path, but it can also be 2D if you confine it (see [these images](_URL_0_)).
The lightning channel itself tend to be very narrow. We can model it as a series of cylinders, but I hesitate to call it cylindrical because that implies a lightning surface, which is not the case. Lightning is simply defined by where the electrons flow - there will be more electrons toward the center of the narrow cylinder, and less towards the edges. And the electrons don't all move in the same direction together, that's why you get the branching effect as different pockets of charge move in very erratic patterns. | [
"In three-dimensional space, 0-blades are again scalars and 1-blades are three-dimensional vectors, and 2-blades are oriented area elements. 3-blades represent volume elements and in three-dimensional space; these are scalar-like—i.e., 3-blades in three-dimensions form a one-dimensional vector space.\n",
"In thre... |
why do some chemicals change colours when mixed with other chemicals? | These changes are do to new molecules being formed, making light react differently to the product. Different atoms and molecules radiate different colors of light, and the colors they radiate depend on their particular atomic and molecular structure. Specifically, the more electrons are confined, the closer the spacings between their energy levels allowing shorter wavelengths to be absorbed. | [
"Chemical colors are more durable properties of an external object, such as the red color of an apple. A chemical color is incomprehensible because we don't know its cause. Its appearance is only known from experience and it is not an essential part of the object. Chemical colors result from changes in an object's ... |
when completing in luge, what exactly are the athletes doing to control themselves and maximize their speed? | The sled rides on two sharp-bottomed blades known as runners, the only part of the sled that makes contact with the ice.
In order to steer the sled, the slider uses his or her calves to apply pressure to one of the runners, or shifts their weight using their shoulders. Considering the extreme speed, athletes only need to make slight adjustments in order to steer.
| [
"3. Extreme speed is used by the martial artist - by perfecting their relaxation skills thereby allowing the kick to be sent unhindered by muscle - until the moment of contact, where the Wing-Chun base posture, provides target-ground-target energy. \n",
"Players need to readjust the distance of their bounces when... |
why is latin, arguably a dead language, is still so prevalent in medicine, law, and even science? | That is one of the reasons they started using it, because dead languages doesn't change!
To make it short, a swede named Carl Linnaeus got tired of the confusion that plants having different names in different languages caused, so he gave them all latin names. Most scientists at that time knew latin anyway.
That removed a lot of confusion, causing other branches of science to follow suit. | [
"Because it gave rise to many modern languages, Latin did not \"die\"; it merely evolved over the centuries in different regions in diverse ways. The local dialects of Vulgar Latin that emerged eventually became modern Italian, Spanish, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, Romansh, Dalmatian, Sardinian, and many ... |
in the usa, what are the guidelines on having a lawyer during interactions with law enforcement? | You don't have to go down to the station at all.
If they ask you to come down to answer questions, just ask "Am I being arrested?" if they say no, then say "Then please leave me alone" if they say yes just say "I want a lawyer" | [
"The right to consult a lawyer is considered to be important, and the courts have been understanding if, even in cases in which the person arrested or detained preferred not to see any lawyer, it is later argued section 10 is violated because the arrested or detained person did not know any better. This applies, fo... |
why is the dead sea not overflooding? | The dead sea evaporates away leaving salt. It only has tributaries which is why the salt content is so high. | [
"In 2016, the DESERVE institute constructed a network of scientific monitoring stations around the Dead Sea, expanding our understanding of declining water levels, freshwater pollution, and the increased occurrence of sinkholes. Their findings have confirmed previous estimates of water level decline, by the Ministr... |
Can Dogs Count? | Important to note that there's a difference between counting *n* entities and realizing it should be *n+1*, and seeing a group of familiar people and noting that one or more are absent.
Like I show you a picture of Larry and Curly, you aren't counting them, you are *identifying* them and basing your conclusion that Moe is missing from that, not from the much more abstract conversion to pure number theory.
Take [these](_URL_1_) guys. There's some controversy around the specifics, but basically they don't have words for exact numbers at all, just "many" and "fewer". So if you asked them how many people lived in the tribe (or even just how many fingers are on each of their hands), they couldn't tell you. But if you asked to name them all, or identify which ones were missing from a photo, no problem.
In many ways, counting puppies would be an inferior technique for a daddy dog. Recall the head-counting snafu from Home Alone. Numbers are generic and anonymous. Recognition and identity is a much surer thing, at least [within the range that you can keep it all in your head](_URL_0_). | [
"A sense of number has also been found in dogs. For example, dogs were able to perform simple additions of two objects, as revealed by their surprise when the result was incorrect. It is however argued that wolves perform better on quantity discrimination tasks than dogs and that this could be a result of a less de... |
why do people put salt in cakes meant to be sweet? | Salt removes bitterness. I add salt to coffee and lemonade as well. Since dark chocolate, fresh citrus, etc can be pretty bitter it allows the cake to have flavor without the bite. | [
"The cakes are typically served in the paper they were baked in. Found in bakeries, the cakes are typically eaten during breakfast, or teatime. Because of the cakes’ light flavouring, it is possible to eat much of the cake without getting sick because of an overly sugary taste.\n",
"The most variety comes in swee... |
When listening to music, individual areas of the brain are "activated" for melody, rhythm and pitch. Are these areas in the exact same place in my brain and yours? | Okay, so first, caveat, I'm a bit of an fMRI skeptic. This is not to say I think it's all lies, but it is the number 1 area of neuroscience that science writers tend to run with, and the authors never make any attempt to correct them.
Whenever you read anything the that talks about fMRI, you need to remember they are reporting to you a *difference*. Everything in fMRI is a difference. What do I mean? I mean that those glowing areas of brain you see are areas where the activity is different between two situations. For instance, the "melody" part was probably "found" when the played the subjects a melodious tune, and one where they chopped up the sound, so that it no longer had melody, but had all the same pitch and rhythm components. Then the bit of brain that was active in the first case, and not the second is now supposed to be coding for melody. Maybe it just codes for "I'm sick of listening to the nonsense noise"? Who knows? Moreover, this is a best case example. The scientists could have been stupid and just played a highly melodious piece of music and an atonal piece of music, and looked at the brain difference. Maybe one was louder than the other, or higher pitched, or different timbre?
So the point is, fMRI experiments are really difficult to design, because you can only ever look at difference in activation.
Also: _URL_0_
But to answer your other question, are these parts the same in everyone? See the bit that is highlighted at 6:02. That is primary auditory cortex. Is is in the same part of the brain in everyone (well, 99%), as are all the primary cortices. What about other areas? Here is it harder to say because it is harder to design experiments to activate parts of the brain that might code for "The smell of the slightly shinny red handbag my grandmother had" across different subjects, but it certainly appears that there is some degree of overlap between people. | [
"Human brain scans indicated that a peripheral bit of this brain region is active when trying to identify musical pitch. Individual cells consistently get excited by sounds at specific frequencies, or multiples of that frequency.\n",
"The perception of music has a quickly growing body of literature. Structurally,... |
How did the fallen angel Lucifer end up as Satan/the Devil - red-faced, horned, hooved and not what he originally was? | Different people say different stuff because it's a form of Christian mythology, and different people have different explanations depending on where they were raised, the denomination or congregation they attend. It's the same reason why folk songs have many different lyrics, e.g. whether Barbary Allen's boyfriend is named William Green or Jimmy Green or Johnny Green, and whether the rose grows from his grave or her grave. Another popular example would be how the four Gospels do not tell precisely the same Passion story or Nativity -- in no gospel do the "three wise men" and the shepherds appear at the same time.
Last year, I addressed this question as [How did the mythology of the Bible develop...?](_URL_2_), also featuring the work of /u/sunagainstgold, /u/lcnielsen and /u/idjet. You might like [this thread about whether to take Dante seriously.](_URL_0_)
I have not encountered more answers addressing *Paradise Lost* since then, so an answer derived from Milton in particular would be good.
& #x200B;
EDIT: This is not /r/eli5, others may go into greater depth than I, aiming for nuance and rich detail.
EDIT2: Found [another answer about Paradise Lost/Lucifer](_URL_1_) by sunagainstgold | [
"Some Christian writers have applied the name \"Lucifer\" as used in the Book of Isaiah, and the motif of a heavenly being cast down to the earth, to Satan. Sigve K Tonstad argues that the New Testament War in Heaven theme of Revelation 12 (), in which the dragon \"who is called the devil and Satan … was thrown dow... |
How does the theory of wave/particle duality do away with the need to find a wave medium for light, i.e. ether? | The aether was supposed to be some sparse gas through which light was an oscillation. But modern physics has things called [fields](_URL_0_). And you can think of the universe as all of these overlaid fields for electrons and quarks and electromagnetism and gluons and so on. And light, photons, are an oscillation in the electromagnetic field. | [
"In physics, two wave sources are perfectly coherent if they have a constant phase difference and the same frequency, and the same waveform. Coherence is an ideal property of waves that enables stationary (i.e. temporally and spatially constant) interference. It contains several distinct concepts, which are limitin... |
Just how much of an impact did Alexander Hamilton have? | Although I'm not an expert on the American Revolutionary War, I am an economic historian and have extensively studied Alexander Hamilton's absolutely pivotal role in the creation of the modern american political and economic system.
Hamilton's close personal relationship with Washington and his role as Secretary of the Treasury (the government's money guy) led several scholars to call him Washington's "Prime Minister." In spite of opposition by the likes of influential figures like Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton managed to construct a large, powerful Federal government to the detriment of individual states, with a consolidated national debt structure and a standing army. John L. Harper in his "The American Machiavelli," concludes that Hamilton not only was a central, indispensable figure in the construction the apparatus of the American government, but also lay the foundation for the underlying philosophies which would guide American foreign policy: opportunistic but pragmatic, both imperialist and isolationist, "strength through peace and peace through strength."
I'm sorry if this sounds vague, but Hamilton's exploits has filled entire volumes, like Harper's book cited above. Is there anything specific you're interested in? | [
"Hamilton appears to have hoped in 1796 that his influence within an Adams administration would be as great as or greater than in Washington's. By 1800, Hamilton had come to realize that Adams was too independent and thought the Federalist vice presidential candidate, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, ... |
Theoretical physics- What if there was no speed limit like the speed of light? | TL;DR: In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, particles can't decay.
If you take the limit where the speed of light goes to infinity, but you keep ["Galilean relativity"](_URL_0_) (the notion of relativity we'd been using before special relativity), a very large change occurs at the level of elementary particle physics.
In particular, there's a theorem that allows you to classify what kind of states you can have in a quantum mechanical theory given the symmetries of your system. If you apply the symmetries associated with special relativity, you find that states "look like" particles - they're characterized by a mass and a spin, massless particles move at the speed of light, and particles can be created and destroyed. You can also define the "chirality" of particles.
In contrast, if you use the symmetries associated with just Galilean relativity, some of this changes. First, you have no massless particles, and everything must be massive. Second, chirality goes away, though spin is still there. Most drastically, you cannot have any particle decays - every particle must be infinitely stable. So a non-relativistic quantum theory of particle physics is extremely different from a relativistic one like our universe, where everything but the least massive particles decay very quickly. | [
"These considerations show that the speed of light as a limit is a consequence of the properties of spacetime, and not of the properties of objects such as technologically imperfect space ships. The prohibition of faster-than-light motion, therefore, has nothing in particular to do with electromagnetic waves or lig... |
when i'm about to fall asleep, i sometimes have a semi-dream that i'm walking. then i stumble and my leg jerks and wakes me up. why? | It's called a [hypnic jerk](_URL_0_). They're associated with anxiety, but they occur essentially at random even if you're not stressed. Personally, I enjoy them. | [
"Sleepwalking was initially thought to be a dreamer acting out a dream. For example, in one study published by the Society for Science & the Public in 1954, this was the conclusion: \"Repression of hostile feelings against the father caused the patients to react by acting out in a dream world with sleepwalking, the... |
So... does every (soft drink/water) bottle I drink from have BPA in it? If so, just how bad is this shit for you, and does anyone know what brands do not use a BPA-laden plastic? | Many do not these days, at least to my knowledge. The most common way to find out in my experience is to check the number on the bottle. Look for a 7 in the recycle sign, if it has a that, the bottle most likely has BPA in it.
As far as brands, not so sure.
Edit: typos | [
"Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical used to make plastics, and is frequently used to make baby bottles, water bottles, sports equipment, medical devices, and as a coating in food and beverage cans. Scientists are concerned about BPA's behavioral effects on fetuses, infants, and children at current exposure levels beca... |
why is it that sounds that would normally drive is to murder, become perfectly bearable when we are the ones making them? | You may have something called Misophonia. This is a psychological condition where certain sounds trigger your fight or flight response. So you hear someone chewing loudly, and either you want to leave or you want to hit them.
These sounds don't actually bother the other people.
from _URL_0_
"Exposure to a trigger sound elicits an immediate negative emotional response from a person with sound sensitivities. The response can range from moderate discomfort to acute annoyance or go all the way up to full-fledged rage and panic. Fight or flight reactions can occur. While experiencing a trigger event, a person may become agitated, defensive or offensive, distance themselves from the trigger or possibly act out in some manner." | [
"A folk etymology is that it is from white people honking their car horns a lot to get people's attention and perhaps as a metaphor for liberal whites who make a lot of noise (honking) but do not do anything.\n",
"Particularly severe cases of misophonia may result in violent impulses toward the source of the soun... |
internet cookies? | Imagine you're reading a book. You're at a specific part of the book, somewhere in the middle. You decide "that's enough book for today" and you close the book. Next time you open your book, you're going to have to flip through all those pages again and manually find your page. Rather than having to remember what page you're on, why not just have the book remember for you? So you decide to put a bookmark in the book. You can also write down little notes on this bookmark, like "This character just did this" so that next time you open the book you can easily remember what you just read and pick up exactly where you left off.
Cookies are essentially bits of data that websites leave in your browser so that they can quickly easily access them next time you visit. For example, if you sign into Facebook and say "Remember Me", Facebook leaves a cookie that remembers that you logged in on this machine and that you want to be logged in automatically in the future. | [
"An \"HTTP cookie\" (also called \"web cookie\", \"Internet cookie\", \"browser cookie\", or simply \"cookie\") is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user's computer by the user's web browser while the user is browsing. Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to rememb... |
why do kids love bright colors so much, but as they get older, bright colors seem less important? | While growing, humans use attention to collect useful information. In early childhood attention is mostly focused on easily perceivable differences between events and things like contrast, brightness, loudness, primary tastes etc When you grow older you already collected that information and unless some part of your focus got permanently attracted to some of it, like getting hobby of collecting colorful things, your attention moves onto other, more complex and nuanced differences like differences in art style, subtle tastes, refined music styles etc.
Why is it working this way? Because brain builds more complex concepts using more simple ones increasing neural network complexity for their representation. | [
"The age when infants begin showing a preference for color is at about 12 weeks old. Generally, children prefer the colors red/pink and blue, and cool colors are preferred over warm colors. Purple is a color favored more by girls than by boys. Color perception of children 3–5 years of age is an indicator of their d... |
Could it ever be possible to "download" our brains and assemble a "Wiki" of an individual's knowledge, memories, etc? | No.
A number of other threads in /r/askscience recently have been on the same, or similar topics.
Using the search feature with these keywords will show those:
* download/downloading
* upload/uploading
* transfer
* singularity
* brain
To give you the short version: we don't know how brains work, contrary to what we like to claim. Beyond that, we have no idea how to create a technology (or algorithms) that would be anything remotely brain like. It's not just a matter of more RAM/storage/processors. | [
"He proposes that every memory, skill, and passion is encoded somehow in the connectome. And when the brain is not wired properly it can result in mental disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's. Understanding the human connectome may not only help cure such diseases with treatments but... |
How bad was the economic/social state in Britain before Thatcher? | The problem we get before going into the question is that we need an adequate benchmark to judge the economic performance be it by economic growth, productivity, macroeconomic parameters, competitiveness, social indicators of Britain. I think the most relevant comparison would be Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and France. By using this metric, I think it would certainly be fair to say that economic state of Britain was poor. Again, I would want to stress that this is relative because Britain being an Industrialized country offered a better quality of life than most other countries.The roots of the problem goes much deeper than merely economic policy that was adopted by the previous Government.
The most important factor was that the quality of technical management was much poorer in Britain than in other advanced European countries. One of the reasons for this was that people who would normally go into Industry in France or Germany would choose instead to enter into financial services or in public service which placed British Industry at a major disadvantage as compared to their peers. Part of the reason was that salaries for a person in middle management was almost half of France and Germany adjusted for cost of living. Britain did not stress upon the quality of technical, engineering and scientific education as did France (the Polytechnique and the Ponts et Chaussees, etc). The effect was this most noticeable in transportation. The British Government had undertaken two large public projects in 1960's but had to cancel both.
The second was the organization of trade unions with respect to their management. In Britain, there were 115 trade unions as compared to 6 major trade confederations in France and 17 major Industrial unions that were integrated into DGB in Germany. This prevented one craft in Industry to pursue it's interests as against others. Closed shops was illegal in both France and Germany as it was against the Constitution. In Germany it was illegal to go on a strike before the wage agreement had expired. This further compounded the problem in securing Industrial development in Britain. British trade unions had played a very key role in securing safer conditions for workers but they had not secured higher wages (as productivity was lower) nor shorter working hours.
Britain also made a very major mistake in it's foreign policy. After World War 2, Britain wanted to be an independent power that was separate from USSR and the United States by associating itself with the Commonwealth. This was supported as early as 1920’s by Ramsay MacDonald by stating that he supported free association between free people as the model of relationship between the colonies and Britain. The Labour Party actually tried their hardest to keep colonial powers within the British sphere of influence and declared that they felt closer to Australia, New Zealand and US rather than Continental Europe. Britain had hoped to be the chief power in Europe and organize it along a British-French axis. It was for this reason that Britain refused to join the European Single Market in 1954. However, Britain continued to lose it's influence because of Suez Canal misstep and the and consequent decolonization. When Britain had finally joined the Single Market, Europe had reconstituted along a German-French axis.
Britain had over extended and over estimated itself economically by refusing to join Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Netherlands who created the Treaty of Rome. Hence, it missed the opportunity to use it for it's advantage.The six participants of the Treaty were able to increase their trade with each other while Britain was left out and thus British Industry could not face the discipline of market forces and the high standards of quality control for Industries which would have forced it develop further particularly in high technology products. Britain's offer for a free trade deal with Canada was also turned down by Ottawa.
Ultimately, this made the crisis in 1970's much worse and contributed to the general sense of Britain's decline.
References:
Britain's decline; its causes and consequences by Nicholas Henderson
Relative Decline and British Economic Policy in the 1960s by Hugh Pemberton
| [
"A strict modernisation of its economy began under the controversial Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher following her election as prime minister in 1979, which saw a time of record unemployment as deindustrialisation saw the end of much of the country's manufacturing industries but also a time of economic boom a... |
What are some examples of historic deals which were done over beer? | Sorry, we don't allow [throughout history questions](_URL_0_). These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, questions of this type can be directed to more appropriate subreddits, such as /r/history or /r/askhistory. | [
"In the long run, Herrero's brewery did not survive, and the production of European-style beverages such as beer and wine were heavily taxed and heavily regulated by Spain to protect home markets. The purpose of this was to make colonials import these products from Europe. While the policy mostly worked, beer brewi... |
Dear Scientists, How hard is it to synthesis Diesel or Petrol or other fuels obtain by crude oil? | Not hard, just not worth it while there's cheap oil to burn.
Basically, you use a [gasifier](_URL_1_) to generate a mixture of H2 and CO gasses, called "synthesis gas". This is basically done by burning a chunk of carbon (which can come from coal or biomass) in an oxygen-starved atmosphere, and then passing hot steam over the coals. The water molecule will yield its oxygen atoms to two different carbon atoms, so the overall reaction looks like:
H2O(g) + C(s) - > H2(g) + CO(g)
This process produces other products, too, depending on the composition of your feed stock.
Anyways, once you have your synthesis gas, you pass it through a [Fischer-Tropsch reactor](_URL_0_), which uses high temperatures, high pressures, and a metal catalyst to condense the hydrogen and carbon monoxide into hydrocarbons. The length of the carbon chain can be controlled by varying the reactor parameters mentioned above in addition to the "cooking" time.
I don't know enough about chemistry to tell you how the whole catalytic process works, but hopefully somebody will come in here and enlighten both of us. Point is, the technology does exist to do what you mention and it's fairly mature; it's just not (yet) economically competitive. | [
"Synthetic crude may also be created by upgrading bitumen (a tar like substance found in oil sands), or synthesizing liquid hydrocarbons from oil shale. There are a number of processes extracting shale oil (synthetic crude oil) from oil shale by pyrolysis, hydrogenation, or thermal dissolution.\n",
"An oil refine... |
Is there any material that allows light to pass through without any interference? Is it possible to manufacture such a material? | Even a completely transparent substance still has an index of refraction that bends light that goes through it and I assume that refraction would count as "interference."
I don't believe there's anything other than a vacuum that has a refractive index of zero, so I think the answer to your question is "no."
Edit: value of refractive index of a vacuum is 1, not 0. | [
"Some materials allow much of the light that falls on them to be transmitted through the material without being reflected. Materials that allow the transmission of light waves through them are called optically transparent. Chemically pure (undoped) window glass and clean river or spring water are prime examples of ... |
Female Suffrage in France | There was actually quite some activity towards women's suffrage in interwar France; for example, Léon Blum's government made a proposal for this (Léon Blum had probalby the best feminist pedigree in that time period), which was voted by the (left-wing) Assemblée nationale, but rejected by the (right-wing) upper house (this being one of the few ways it could actively impede government policy). There were other propositions, coming from the far-right, such as giving the vote to war widows (as a compensation for the vote of their defunct husband).
A standard argument against women suffrage was that:
1) men were better educated than women (this went back to the late XIXth century and had, among other, military reasons),
2) women were thought to be more church-going than men,
3) therefore, the Radicals (= anticlerical - but socially conservative - center-left, and in control of a lot of parliamentary majorities) thought that women would at best vote like their husbands - and, at worst, like their priest. | [
"The French Union for Women's Suffrage (UFSF: \"Union française pour le suffrage des femmes\") was founded by a group of feminists who had attended a national congress of French feminists in Paris in 1908.\n",
"The French Union for Women's Suffrage (UFSF: \"Union française pour le suffrage des femmes\") was found... |
how does a bill that passed overwhelmingly in the house and senate (98%+) not get enforced by the executive branch? | In response to the title, since the Executive branch has sole authority in enforcing the law, as a consequence it can choose not to enforce the law at all.
In response to the post, since I do not know what specific bill you are talking about I can describe the two vetoes.
First, the President can outright veto a bill on his/her desk and send it back to Congress within 10 days (or it defaults into a law) to vote on it again. If they get a two-thirds majority it becomes a law without having to go back to the President, if they do not get a two-thirds majority, it does not become a law.
Second, a pocket veto is when a President does not sign a bill into law at the end of the 10 day time limit **and** Congress is not in session at the end of the 10 day time limit to override it with a two-thirds vote. | [
"Each bill needs the consent of both houses in order to be submitted to the president for his signature. If the president vetoes the bill, Congress can override the veto with a two-thirds supermajority. If either house voted down on a bill or fails to act on it after an adjournment sine die, the bill is lost and wo... |
would the screen rotation function work in space? | Phones have devices called accelerometers which feel the pull of gravity similar to how we do. Take one of these devices on a bungee jump, and it will record the increased force that you feel at the bottom of the cord.
In orbit, everything is in constant free-fall, so there is very little apparent gravity for people on-board the ISS, but the ISS is spinning slightly, creating something called the coriolis effect. Just like those carnival rides which spin and push you up against the wall, people and objects on the ISS are ever-so-slightly pushed toward the outside of the station's spin. The accelerometers can detect this and the effect can be used to force the screen to rotate. However, the force is so much less than gravity on Earth and astronauts don't really use it very much, it is likely more of an inconsistent annoyance than a useful feature. | [
"An example where rotation representation is used is in computer vision, where an automated observer needs to track a target. Consider a rigid body, with three orthogonal unit vectors fixed to its body (representing the three axes of the object's local coordinate system). The basic problem is to specify the orienta... |
If a human got shrunk to a minuscule size, would physics act on him in the same way? | I'm no expert in this by any means, but I seem to remember a biology textbook saying that the size of our cells are such because a certain ratio of surface area to volume is required to preform certain cellular functions.
So I'm assuming that if we were truly "shrunk" are bodies wouldn't be able to function normally. | [
"The problems of the miniaturized human do not stop there, however. Basic geometry governs such things as the relationship between cross-section, volume, and surface area. It may be impossible for a one-inch high human to kill themselves in a fall of any conceivable height, but they may be able to drown themselves ... |
how do brackets move teeths from their cavity? | Your bone isn't a static structure, the hard mineral deposits that gives it its strength is constantly being repaired and remodeled by specialized cells.
Applying force in one direction on the tooth stimulates the removal of bone on one side (by osteoclasts) and deposited on the other (by osteoblasts) so the entire cavity can be slowly shifted, similar to how your teeth erupted out of your jaw bone originally. | [
"The application of braces moves the teeth as a result of force and pressure on the teeth. There are traditionally four basic elements that are used: brackets, bonding material, arch wire, and ligature elastic (also called an “O-ring”). The teeth move when the arch wire puts pressure on the brackets and teeth. Some... |
Before the American war of independence, did the residents of the colonies consider themselves American, or as British colonists living in America? | Many of them considered themselves to be British before and during the American Revolution, and actively fought against the Colonists on the side of the British. These people were known as Loyalists. The others did not view themselves as Americans either though. They identified themselves as Virginians or Pennsylvanians or Georgians ect. depending on which colony they were from. This mentality carried on long after the Revolution for many Americans too. Even during the Civil War there are examples of this such as When Robert E. Lee declined the offer to lead the Union Army in favor of leading the Army of Northern Virginia on the side of the Confederacy. He did so even though he was strongly opposed to the idea of slavery, due to the fact that Virgina had seceded from the Union and he considered himself a Virginian before anything else. | [
"The colonies were very different from one another but they were still a part of the British Empire in more than just name. Demographically, the majority of the colonists traced their roots to the British Isles and many of them still had family ties with Great Britain. Socially, the colonial elite of Boston, New Yo... |
How could a backdoor be put into a random number generator? | The trick is that Intel's RdRand is a black box that we have to trust. So, conceptually, what is something they could do to "backdoor" the system?
In cryptography, a secure stream cipher is *indistinguishable from random* by an adversary (that is limited to probabilistic polynomial time, but details details). In other words, if you have a stream cipher, you have a way of generating a practically infinite bitstream that an attacker thinks is random, but is really not. That infinite bitstream is generated *solely* from a secret key and a random seed.
So RdRand could actually just be using a stream cipher with a baked-in secret key and a seed that Intel (or the NSA or whatever) can predict - maybe the seed is the time at which the machine booted. An RdRand user cannot determine if the bitstream is "truly" random, so if they use RdRand, they implicitly trust that it is not maliciously designed. On the other hand, the backdoor user knows the secret key and can test for some predictable seeds, eventually find the seed in question, and then use that key+seed to determine all of RdRand's output.
That's one possible scenario.
*In general*, it's also possible for pseudorandom algorithms themselves to contain "mathematical backdoors" that aren't easily discovered even if you know the algorithm. An example of that is [Dual_EC_DRBG](_URL_0_). For a simplified version of the attack, view D.W.'s post [here](_URL_2_) - the section that says "I see that you want to explain the mathematics". In that section, he attacks a simplified version of Dual_EC_DRBG. If you want to see the real attack explained, with all of the nitty-gritty details, view my post [here](_URL_1_). | [
"An example of a simple mathematical trapdoor is \"6895601 is the product of two prime numbers. What are those numbers?\" A typical solution would be to try dividing 6895601 by several prime numbers until finding the answer. However, if one is told that 1931 is one of the numbers, one can find the answer by enterin... |
who makes direct-to-video movies and how do they make money? | Filmmaker here. To understand how studios such as "The Asylum" make money on movies like Transmorphers you have to understand a bit about the industry.
There are approximately 7 major studios who make the major pictures you've heard of eg. Transformers. The majors have the vast money to fund, make and distribute their own movies. But they make very few films and they're very expensive.
But internationally there is a huge demand for original content to fill television time slots. Think midnight on an obscure Japanese channel. They have to air something and they have a small budget to buy content with. Ideally but not necessarily something people will want to watch.
So below the 7 majors are approximately 300+ "mini-majors" who are movie distributors ("sellers") with the connections to these international networks ("buyers") but not enough money to actually make the films themselves. But they constantly need new content ("product") to sell to them.
So the buyers want content, the sellers want content to sell, and studios like The Asylum turn out pre-sold product to fill the demand. As long as it sounds like something people might watch they can pre-sell it.
Studios like Asylum know that the foreign film buyers need to buy *something* to fill their theaters/time slots, and the mini-major distributors need *something* to sell to those hungry buyers. By aping an upcoming major release, Asylum gets all the publicity for their movies for free and are guaranteed pre-arranged sales. The distributor pre-sells the movie ("Transmorphers") to a multitude of the buyers based on the title and concept alone without regards to the quality. Nobody cares because they need to spend their budgets and they know Asylum will deliver *something* that's in 90 minutes and in rough focus.
**tl;dr** The rights are pre-sold overseas and these movies are profitable before they're ever made. Quality doesn't matter, they're just filling an order. | [
"A-Company Filmed Entertainment (commonly known as A-Company) is an independent film and video content provider for Central and Eastern Europe, CIS and Vietnam. A-Company distributes theatrical, home entertainment and television productions as well as Video-On-Demand.\n",
"Videofilms in this era were produced on ... |
what's the difference between a state and a province? | Technically, a state is an independent political entity, while a province is a sub-section of a state.
The confusion arises from nomenclature not keeping pace with politics. The United States was, when founded, similar to the modern European Union. It was a union of various sovereign entities. However, after the Civil War, the entire union became a nation of its own and the 'state' label wasn't updated to reflect this fact.
You see the same issue with the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is actually the United Kingdoms - of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. So you've got a nation state that's actually the union of 4 'kingdom's that are neither sovereign nor ruled by a king. | [
"In many federations and confederations, the province or state is not clearly subordinate to the national or central government. Rather, it is considered to be sovereign in regard to its particular set of constitutional functions. The central- and provincial-government functions, or areas of jurisdiction, are ident... |
as a heavy ( > 1pack/day) smoker, why don't i wake up from nicotine withdrawals when i can barely make it two hours without a smoke? | Most smokers *DO* wake up after a night's sleep with nicotine withdrawal. I do not know why you do not. That is not the usual pattern for addicted smokers. | [
"Normal between-cigarettes discontinuation, in unrestricted smokers, causes mild but measurable nicotine withdrawal symptoms. These include mildly worse mood, stress, anxiety, cognition, and sleep, all of which briefly return to normal with the next cigarette. Smokers have worse mood than they would have if they we... |
What were Louis XVI's plans of counterrevolution and were they realistic? | I believe that I can only answer the first half of the question - I feel as though I am not competent enough to expound on the second.
It is without a doubt that Louis XVI's plans of counter-revolution were in fact due to his disaffection with the changes to the Church, the limitations of his power, and the support from the aristocrats who supported counterrevolutionary activities. After all, the aristocrats wanted to restore the old social privilege that was dismantled during the 'peaceful' (as I will say it) years of the revolution - which they were only concerned with the fate of the King.
So the plans of the counterrevolution was this: On June 20 1791, the King was to escape from the Tuileries to Montedy near the Belgian border, part of the Austrian empire at that time. It is only from there onwards that with the aid of Marie Antoinette's brother, Joseph II the Holy Roman Emperor and the supporting émigrés would they initiate a counter revolution. Norman Hampson says that the aristocrat, especially those who supported counter revolution were primarily the émigrés, and that they were prepared for civil war and foreign invasion. Of course, as we all know how the narrative goes, a series of mishaps and failures lead to the royal family being recognised by Douret, the postmaster from Ste Menehould. After witnessing the King did he dash to Varennes to warn the guards to get him arrested.
A primary account of the escape can be read [here](_URL_0_). It also gives you a path of where they will be taking.
However, I think the most beneficial and necessary part to understand in this event is seismic repercussions it generated. Different historians give a similar, yet different response when it comes to the significance.
William Doyle for instance, states that:
> “The flight to Varennes opened up the second great schism of the revolution. There had been hardly any republicanism in 1789, and what there had been abated once the king was back in Paris and accepting all the Assembly sent to him. But after Varennes, the mistrust built up by his long record of apparent ambivalence burst out into widespread demands from the populace of the capital and a number of radical publicists for the king to be dethroned.”
Similarly, Hampson states that:
> "The point at issue, itself primarily constitutional, in act divided Parisian opinion along social lines, with the wealthier and more educated supporting the Assembly in its fiction that the king had been 'kidnapped' and those whom their opponents were beginning to call sans-cullotes demanding the kind of clear and forceful measures that corresponded to their view of the situation. Inevitably ,therefore, the pursuit of a compromise with the king led the Assembly to prepare for conflict with the sans-cullotes, who were organizing petitions against any hasty rehabilitation of Louis XVI."
Other effects was the repudiation of the direction of the Revolution and many of the acts Louis XVI previously endorsed. Louis XVI himself was humiliated, compromised ad discredited Louis XVI. It showed not only did he misread the political situation of France, but one may also argue that it was the first steps into Republicanism and radicalism. After all, it was at this point at time that ministers became divided over the punishment of the King. Others called for Republicanism, others still wanted to maintain a sense of monarchy, and others called for his abdication.
One of the reactions can be seen in writing expressed by figures such as Abbe Greogire, who was in the now torn-apart Jacobins, argued that Louis XVI should be forced to abdicate:
> "The premier public servant abandons his post; he arms himself with a false passport; after having said, in writing to the foreign powers, that his most dangerous enemies are those who pretended to spread doubts about the monarch's intentions, he breaks his word, he leaves the French a declaration which, if not criminal, is at least -however is envisaged - contrary to the principles of our liberty. He could not be unaware that his flight exposed the nation to the dangers of civil war; and finally, in hypothesis that he wished only to go to Monmedy, I say: either he wanted to content himself with making peaceful observations to the National Assembly regarding its decrees, and in that case it was useless to flee; or he wanted to support his claims with arms, and in that case it was a conspiracy against liberty."
So evidently, the effects would only lead to one even to another. After this issue would this lead to the Champ de Mars massacre - something that would generate a deeper schism between the nation. It is noted that the outcome of Louis XVI's plans to escape were far more traumatising than what I wrote above, but, if you were to put the effectiveness of the plan in terms of the context of what the King faced back then, it proved to be not realistic at all. After all, Louis XVI's miscalculations accentuated any sense of antagonism against the monarchy, and it would only be his downfall. He will be later be known as 'Citizen Louis Capet' in the minds of the many. More importantly, a betrayer to his country and the revolution.
If you were you view if it was realistic in contemporary sense however, I think that can be answered by other more competent historians here.
Sources:
1. Doyle, W 2002, *The Oxford History of the French Revolution*
2. Hampson, N 1963, *A Social History of the French Revolution*
3. McPhee, P 2002, *The French Revolution*
edit: Just a question I wanted to ask the others reading (since I wanted some feedback) - is there any way you suggest for me to improve an answer? I'm learning to how write more academically as a high school student here. It's definitely not as top notch as compared to what goes on here, but I'm eager to improve. Hope this question doesn't derive the question OP asked! | [
"On January 21, 1793, Louis Capet, the former King Louis XVI, was found guilty of treason and guillotined on the Place de la Révolution (today's \"Place de la Concorde\"). General Dumouriez, who became minister of war after Pache was removed for corruption, took charge of the army of the North. Dumouriez, a Girondi... |
When a photon is emitted from an stationary atom, does it accelerate from 0 to the speed of light? | They don't start off at zero, and there's no acceleration. They start off at *c* and always travel at *c*. This is because, due to special relativity, any massless particle can *only* ever move at *c*, any other speed isn't allowed physically. | [
"By combining the small momentum of a single photon with a velocity and spatially dependent absorption cross section and a large number of absorption-spontaneous emission cycles, atoms with initial velocities of hundreds of metres per second can be slowed to tens of centimetres per second.\n",
"BULLET::::- Relati... |
if the odds of winning the powerball is 1 in 235 million, but the jackpot is $800 million, wouldn't it make sense to buy 235 million quick picks if you could afford it? | Taxes, and the unfortunate circumstances where you share your winnings with others who only bought a few hundred picks... Not a good investment no | [
"While Mega Millions and Powerball each have similar jackpot odds despite having a different double matrix (Mega Millions is 5/75 + 1/15), since Powerball is $2 per play, it now takes $584,402,676 (not counting Power Play side bets) on average to produce a jackpot-winning ticket.\n",
"The odds of winning or shari... |
High exposure to sunlight damages your skin. What does it do to the bacterial population? | The given "sunlight damages your skin" needs to be addressed before the question. The pathogenesis of sunburn is distinct from the mechanism of alkaline or thermal burns insofar as the agent (sunlight) is not directly traumatic. The change is mediated by signaling cascades possibly secondary to alteration of base pairs in DNA. Put another way, you can give a corpse a chemical burn or a thermal burn, but not a sunburn. It's our body's response to sun that creates the cutaneous changes, not, strictly speaking, the sun damaging our skin.
So UV light doesn't hurt, but it does disrupt DNA. In bacteria, sufficient disruption will result in cell death, however they have enzymes capable of reversing the dimerization caused by UV that are not present in humans. | [
"Exposure to sunlight has been shown to deactivate diarrhea-causing organisms in polluted drinking water. The inactivation of pathogenic organisms is attributed to: the UV-A (wavelength 320–400 nm) part of the sunlight, which reacts with oxygen dissolved in the water and produces highly reactive forms of oxygen (ox... |
what is it about how sound waves interact that make some sounds/chords pleasing? for example, why does a 5th sound good but a tritone (diminished 5th) doesn’t? why does it seem chords/chord progressions resolve? | It has to do with the ratio of one sound wave's frequency to that of another. When the value can be expressed as a simple ratio, we interpret the interval as pleasing, or "consonant." If the ratio is complex, we tend to interpret the result as displeasing, or "dissonant." A perfect fifth, for example, is a 3:2 ratio, while a half-step is more like 15:8 and a tritone 45:32.
Resolution follows similar principles, but it also heavily influenced by common notes, starting notes and the cultural dominance of specific scales in Western music.
| [
"A conical shaped resonator, such as a megaphone, tends to amplify all pitches indiscriminately. A cylindrical shaped resonator is affected primarily by the length of the tube through which the sound wave travels. A spherical resonator will be affected by the amount of opening it has and by whether or not that open... |
what exactly is gluten, and why is it bad for you? | It's a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye, and it gives bread it's chewyness.
Unless you have an allergy to it or Celiac disease, it's not bad for you at all. | [
"Gluten, a mixture of proteins found in wheat and related grains including barley, rye, oat, and all their species and hybrids (such as spelt, kamut, and triticale), causes health problems for those with gluten-related disorders, including celiac disease, non-celiac gluten sensitivity, gluten ataxia, dermatitis her... |
why our ears remain numb and produce high frequency sound post concert? | There'll be a better answer by someone else soon, but:
Inside your ear there's an organ shaped like a snail. It has tiny hairs on it, that when they vibrate translate this into nerve impulses to send to your brain. If they are stressed too much, they stick to that organ, producing a constant signal. Some times they will never come back up, effectively making you loose that frequency forever. The beeping is called tinnitus.
Tldr: wear earplugs for Pete's sake! My hearing is significantly worse than that of my mates because I went to many concerts without earplugs! | [
"When exposed to a multitude of sounds from several different sources, sensory overload may occur. This overstimulation can result in general fatigue and loss of sensation in the ear. The associated mechanisms are explained in further detail down below. Sensory overload usually occurs with environmental stimuli and... |
Were there any volunteer gladiators? | One exceptional example would be the Emperor Commodus, as depicted in the movie Gladiator. Commodus believed himself to be the reincarnation of Hercules and sought to imitate his martial accomplishments before the eyes of the Roman public. He, of course, was never in any real danger from his human opponents who (as recorded by Dio Cassius) would yield to him after token resistance rather than fight seriously, or were infirm and could not put up a fair fight in the first place. He also enjoyed killing exotic animals, such as leopards and ostriches, from a safe distance; Herodian writes that he had a circular platform built in the arena from atop which he would throw javelins at them.
Commodus was assassinated not long after rumors spread that he intended to appear before the Senate in animal skins, the attire of a gladiator, and be sworn in as consul (after arranging for the death of the currently elected consul.) | [
"Athletic exercises by free citizens (no longer required to serve as soldiers since Marius' army reform) were partly replaced by gladiatorial games performed in amphitheatres. The gladiators were mainly recruited among slaves, war captives and death row convicts — the very lowest, who had no choice — but occasional... |
one day they're there and the other day gone after construction! how on earth are cranes made!?? | I presume you're talking about tower cranes - the type with the tall metal lattice tower?
They actually build themselves.
The very first thing that's done is that the bottom section of the tower is put in and, on top of that they put a special section of the tower that can move up and down, before plonking the top bit of the crane on top of that. To do this, they use a mobile crane, but that's only good for the bottom, as mobile cranes generally aren't as tall as tower cranes can be.
So, once they've built a little tiny tower crane, the special tower section that I mentioned jacks itself up, leaving a space where a new section of lattice tower can be slotted in. The tower crane itself lifts up the new section to where it's needed.
Once this new section is bolted in, the whole thing happens again - the top parts of the crane are lifted up on the movable section at the top, a new bit is slotted in, and so on...
Edit: And here's a video, which shows it quite nicely _URL_0_ | [
"Throughout Asia, the crane is a symbol of happiness and eternal youth. In Japan, the crane is one of the mystical or holy creatures (others include the dragon and the tortoise) and symbolizes good fortune and longevity because of its fabled life span of a thousand years. The crane is a favourite subject of the tra... |
how dangerous is it to taste a small amount of cocaine? | I imagine this question popped into your head because of the movie trope where someone dips their finger or knife into some white powder then tastes it or rubs it on their gums to confirm "Yup, that's cocaine."
The small amount of exposure to the drug there would likely be too small to feel an effect, let alone have a dangerous reaction. Well, an effect other than local tingling or numbness of the tongue or gums, which is more likely what our hero is checking for rather than him knowing what cocaine tastes like.
However, perhaps on day one of high school chemistry, you might've learned that tasting an unknown substance to find out what it might be is a monumentally bad idea.
What if those barrels, bags or bricks contained any number of dangerous and toxic chemicals that are white powders, or how about anthrax for pete's sake?
TL;DR:
Tasting a small amount of cocaine = not dangerous.
Tasting a small amount of white powder = pretty damn stupid.
EDIT: I forgot this was ELI5, so replace "high school chemistry" with "kindergarten" and "tasting an unknown substance to find out what it might be is a monumentally bad idea." with "Don't put that in your mouth! That's yucky!" | [
"The acute toxicity of the drug is low. Overdose causes only harmless side effects such as nausea and vaginal bleeding. The has been found to range between 500 mg/kg in dogs and over 3000 mg/kg in rats. Chronic toxicity has been examined in animals, but nothing but the typical adverse effects of progestogens, and r... |
Does plate tectonic activity have a measurable effect on the weather? | Tectonics has a huge influence on the climate (the difference between weather and climate being a question of a very short vs a longer timescale, so by proxy, tectonics have an influence on the weather, but it's easier and more appropriate to think about tectonics and climate as these evolve on more similar timescales) in a myriad of ways:
**1)** The growth of mountain ranges dramatically influence atmospheric circulation, distribution of precipitation, etc. On a small scale, it's easy to think about the [orographic effect](_URL_3_) that mountains have on weather systems leading to 'wet' and 'dry' sides of ranges. On larger scales, massive mountain ranges like the Andes or Himalaya have fundamentally changed the climates of these regions through this and related effects. The monsoonal climate of both the [Himalayas](_URL_4_) and [Andes](_URL_0_) have been linked to the topographic growth of those mountain ranges and their influence on atmospheric circulation.
**2)** Staying with mountain building, there is a hypothesis that independent of any changes to atmospheric circulation induced by the topographic growth of mountain ranges, that large mountain building events lead to global cooling events. The [idea here](_URL_1_) is that mountain building leads to increased rates of chemical weathering of silicate minerals, the process of chemical weathering removes CO2 from the atmosphere (i.e. CO2 is a reactant in chemical weathering processs of various minerals), leading to global cooling. Last I checked people are still arguing about the veracity of this hypothesis (i.e. it makes sense in theory, but tying global cooling to chemical weathering rates in the past is tricky).
**3)** Plate movements change ocean currents, which change climate. This is often the most extreme in the case of closing a 'gateway', i.e. shutting off communication of two large portions of the ocean via development of a land barrier. A great example of this is the formation of the [isthmus of Panama](_URL_2_) which shut off communication between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and is credited with leading to the development of the Gulf Stream which dramatically influences the climate of the North American and western portion of Eurasian (i.e. Europe) continents.
**4)** The distribution of landmasses themselves can have a large influence on climate. Specifically, whether or not there are significant landmasses in the high latitudes influence whether large accumulations of ice can form (i.e. ice sheets). The presence of large ice sheets, among other things, influences the albedo of the Earth and thus have an influence on global temperature (snow/ice has a high albedo, reflects more sunglight, etc).
These are just the ones I could think of off the top of my head, others may have more influences that I'm forgetting, but the TL;DR is that tectonics is one of the primary influences on long term climate changes. | [
"Over the course of millions of years, the motion of tectonic plates reconfigures global land and ocean areas and generates topography. This can affect both global and local patterns of climate and atmosphere-ocean circulation.\n",
"Tectonic–climatic interaction is the interrelationship between tectonic processes... |
Is there a compound that can be found naturally but cannot be made artificially? | Depends in what way you mean by 'made artificially'. Proteins and enzymes are very complex structures that can't really be made by standard chemical reactions, and require a living organism such as bacteria to be produced in a lab.
A good example is insulin, a hormone used to treat diabetics. It was originally isolated in the early 20th century by harvesting it from the pancreas of a dog, but nowadays its produced by specially cultivated bacteria.
It's not currently possible to synthesise insulin chemically (along with a lot of other biological compounds) as the molecules are so complex. Edit:[More info about insulin](_URL_0_)
Edit2: I just learned that insulin can in fact be synthesised! See below comment. | [
"Since synthons are idealized structures, it is often difficult to find equivalent chemical compounds in the real world. Many carbanion synthons, as drawn, present stability issues that render the molecule’s existence in reality impossible. For example, an acyl anions are not stable species, but the acyl anion synt... |
If I ate this whole bottle of vitamins, what would happen to me? | [International Units](_URL_6_) or IUs are biological equivalents for substances like vitamins. There is no standard conversion such as 1 IU always equals 0.5mg. It depends on what vitamin we are talking about. This may seem unnecessary at first, but when you consider that various versions of pre-vitamins result in different amounts of usable vitamin in your body it starts to make sense.
With a quick glance, my eyes are immediately drawn to the non-water soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) of which your multivitamin contains all but K.
Vitamin A is renown for its potential [toxicities](_URL_2_), and the 200,000 IU of preformed vitamin seems like a lot, but is still far below the lethal dose of 7.5M IU theorized by Rodahl and Moore in their [1943 paper](_URL_1_) which brought to light the potential dangers of polar bear and seal liver.
The 20,000 IU of Vitamin D is probably also not an acute concern though high doses are associated with elevated calcium levels:
> Long-term intakes above the UL increase the risk of adverse health effects [1] (Table 4). Most reports suggest a toxicity threshold for vitamin D of 10,000 to 40,000 IU/day and serum 25(OH)D levels of 500–600 nmol/L (200–240 ng/mL). [ODS on Vitamin D](_URL_4_)
Vitamin E overdose can lead to clotting problems, but 2000 IU/d has been deemed safe over the short term [ODS on vitamin E](_URL_3_).
Of the other listed ingredients, Zinc is probably not an acute concern but may be a chronic concern depending on whether that 5 mg is elemental or Zinc Sulfate as listed in the ingredients:
> One case report cited severe nausea and vomiting within 30 minutes of ingesting 4 g of zinc gluconate (570 mg elemental zinc). Intakes of 150–450 mg of zinc per day have been associated with such chronic effects as low copper status, altered iron function, reduced immune function, and reduced levels of high-density lipoproteins. [ODS on Zinc](_URL_0_).
At a glance, I don't believe that consuming this whole bottle would lead to immediate death. (though this thought experiment obviously shouldn't be carried out) Long term effects of high doses of vitamins are discussed at length in my cited resources.
Something to always watch out for in vitamins though is Iron.
> In children, death has occurred from ingesting 200 mg of iron. [ODS on iron](_URL_5_)
This can be a big problem with candy flavored multivatimins which often contain large amounts of iron in order to help certain populations (such as women after the age of first menstruation and before menopause) but have a limited usefulness in most children. | [
"Vitamin overdose can be avoided by not taking more than the normal or recommended amount of multi-vitamin supplement shown on the bottle. and not ingesting multiple vitamin-containing supplements concurrently\n",
"Toxicity results from ingesting too much preformed vitamin A from foods (such as fish or animal liv... |
If person A is travelling at a fast speed away from person B, why is it that person A's time runs slower when you could say that person B is travelling away relative to A? | Your assessment is spot on. They both see the others clock running slow, which is generally called 'the principle of reciprocity' in introductory textbooks.
If you have two space ships pass each other while traveling at constant velocities, each will feel 'at rest' with respect to the other. This results in each of them seeing the others time slow down. This may seem spooky, but it's a straight forward consequence of the Lorentz transformations. | [
"More generally, it is normally impossible for information or energy to travel faster than \"c\". One argument for this follows from the counter-intuitive implication of special relativity known as the relativity of simultaneity. If the spatial distance between two events A and B is greater than the time interval b... |
Does the concept of religion differ outside of Abrahamic religions? | This isn't really a history question, but some here may want to answer. Meanwhile, you might consider x-posting this question to r/AskReligion, r/AskAnthropology, or r/AskSocialScience | [
"Today, religion is broadly conceived as an abstraction which entails beliefs, doctrines and sacred places—even though the ancient and medieval cultures that produced religious texts, like the Bible or the Quran, did not have such conceptions or ideas in their languages, cultures, or histories. However, there is st... |
what is the keynesian multiplier, and how does it help disprove supply-side economics? | The mythical Keynesisn multiplier falls hard for the Broken Window Fallacy. It measures what is seen in one part of the economy and neglects to subtracts out the unseen losses in the rest of the economy. If it were true we would never have another recession. | [
"The complex multiplier is the multiplier principle in Keynesian economics (formulated by John Maynard Keynes). The simplistic multiplier that is the reciprocal of the marginal propensity to save is a special case used for illustrative purposes only. The multiplier applies to any change in autonomous expenditure, i... |
what causes some tv shows/movies to look somehow "off" on newer screens (kind of soap opera-looking)? | You have motion interpolation turned on. It is a function that inserts computer-generated estimate frames between the existing frames of video to create smoother motion, but it's an aesthetic associated with camcorders and soap operas, so people often dislike it.
Look through your TV's menu and turn it off. | [
"Many complain that the soap opera effect ruins the theatrical look of cinematic works, by making it appear as if the viewer is either on set or watching a behind the scenes featurette. For this reason, almost all manufacturers have built in an option to turn the feature off or lower the effect strength.\n",
"Phi... |
why some people can float, while others can' t? | People can float in water if they learned or figured out how to do so. Those who cannot did not learn how. But no one is incapable of it. In fact its harder to not float than it is to float, because of your lungs, since they are filled with air.
If you wanna see what I mean, try getting a basketball underwater. | [
"A floating sensation (referred to as 'float') is cultivated throughout. Float does not ignore the existence of gravity. However rather than giving into gravity and adhering to heaviness, the body uses gravity as a force of energy and even elevation of the limbs. Naharin states, “we sense the weight of our body par... |
Q from my 5-year old: did dinosaurs have boogers? | [Birds are more likely related to dinosaurs](_URL_2_), rather than reptiles to dinosaurs, and birds do get [nasal mucus](_URL_1_).
A booger by any other name is still a [booger](_URL_0_). | [
"\"Stegosaurus\" has long been featured in popular informational books about dinosaurs. This is ostensibly due to its status as being one of the most famous dinosaurs in popular culture. Several older nonfiction books incorrectly stated that \"Stegosaurus\" had two brains, due to a mistake made by Marsh during the ... |
calvinism | John Calvin was a theologian who was part of the reformation. His theology became known as Calvinism.
Basically Calvinism is boiled down to the TULIP beliefs.
* T - Total Depravity - All parts of man are affected by sin
* U - Unconditional Election - We are saved by Christ without any conditions. We do not earn it, it is completely a gift.
* L - Limited Atonement - Jesus died on the cross only for those who follow Him. His atonement for sins was not for everyone.
* I - Irresistible Grace - If God wants you to follow Him you can't resist the call.
* P - Perseverance of the Saints -Once saved always saved. You can't lose your salvation.
Not every Calvinist agrees with all 5 points. In fact, some say Calvin didn't believe in all of them (the term TULIP was made up after he died) but these are the basic theological points.
**tl;dr - There are two main camps of Christian theology. Men are in control and choose to follow God (Arminianism) and God is in control and chooses who follows Him (Calvinism).** | [
"Calvinism is a system of Christian theology and an approach to Christian life and thought within the Protestant tradition articulated by John Calvin, a Protestant Reformer in the 16th century, and subsequently by successors, associates, followers and admirers of Calvin, his interpretation of scripture, and perspec... |
I always hear how "Wilt played against milkmen" or "NFL players had day jobs as oil workers". How did sports contracts go from the equivalent of a second job to multi-million dollar deals? | The answer boils down to about two points: Market size and collective negotiations.
Back in the day, sports athletes were considered amateurs and were more motivated by passion to engage in a hobby more than working a primary job for earning income. As time went on through the 30s and 40s, competition and swelling audience sizes encouraged the development of a more professional caste of athletes who were naturally a bit better paid than their amateur predecessors, but we’re still not close to the modern multimillion dollar contract.
By the 1950s broadcasting emerged as the big game changer, catapulted by effective collective action. With broadcasting the audience size increased exponentially, and earning of the overall sport. As owners and broadcasters made more and more, players increasingly organized to bargain for better pay. Through the 1970s and onward, as player organizations and unions became powerful and ubiquitous, and rating soared to higher and higher levels, players’ salaries ballooned.
Keep in mind, though, players’ salaries vary wildly even with the same league or even the same team.
_URL_1_
_URL_2_
_URL_0_ | [
"Bonus babies were the group of amateur baseball players who went straight to the Major Leagues between the years 1947 and 1965 and received a signing bonus in excess of $4,000. The bonus rule prevented the player from spending time in the Minor League Baseball system that was, and is, the training ground for most ... |
what are the benefits to running in the cold | I played rugby in high school and I much preferred training and playing in the cold because of how tired and overheated I felt after. At first it sucked since I was all clammy and cold but after you get blood moving this is no longer an issue. At the end of the day, I always preferred playing and training in the cold, especially if it was rainy and muddy. | [
"Running is an effective way to reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and tension. It helps people who struggle with seasonal affective disorder by being more outside running when it's sunny and warm. Running can improve mental alertness and also improve sleep which is needed for good mental health. Both research and... |
how do huge herbivores such as elephants and rhino's build muscle and mass without meat? what makes a human's body unable to grow similarly from just grass/leaves? | Au contraire! Vegetables, especially grains, have all kinds of protein in them. Here's a series of charts.
_URL_1_
I think they get enough protein because they consume enough in their food.
Elephants are not ruminants.
_URL_0_ | [
"Members of the rhinoceros family are some of the largest remaining megafauna, with all species able to reach or exceed one tonne in weight. They have a herbivorous diet, small brains (400–600 g) for mammals of their size, one or two horns, and a thick (1.5–5 cm) protective skin formed from layers of collagen posit... |
why are female pornstars paid more than male pornstars? isn't that illegal? | How many beautiful women do you know that are willing to let a complete stranger fuck them in the ass and spray semen on their faces? Now, while you're pondering that I ask you, how many guys do you know that would fuck a beautiful woman they've never met in the ass and spray semen on their face? I believe it all comes down to supply and demand.... | [
"Payment for pornstars is dependent on the sex acts performed; however, in a single scene, female actresses typically make between $100 and $6000, while male actors make between $100 and $400. In 2017, the Independent reported that female performers in scenes with male performers typically earn around $1,000, compa... |
How can Planck's Constant be well... a constant if we know that space itself has and is expanding? | Physical constants are immutable with respect to time by definition. If for instance the speed of light would speed up or slow down for some magical reason, it would from a physical stand point be the meter which gets longer or shorter as the speed of light and the passing of time must be constant.
In your example, the Planck energy:
E=hc/λ (Energy = Planck Constant*speed of light/wavelength)
of a photon would decrease as it propagated through the expanding universe, but since the speed of light and Planck constant are constants, it's the wavelength which gets expanded. | [
"The Planck constant is one of the smallest constants used in physics. This reflects the fact that on a scale adapted to humans, where energies are typically of the order of kilojoules and times are typically of the order of seconds or minutes, the Planck constant (the quantum of action) is very small. One can rega... |
why my torrents go so slow even though there's more seeders than leechers? | There are several possibilities.
1. If you are using a public site like piratebay most of those "seeders" are probably limiting their upload to a few k/s
2. Your internet provider might be limiting your download over torrents.
3. You might not be connectable the port you are using is not open. This limits who you can connect to. | [
"Super seeding transfers stall when there is only one downloading client. The seeders will not send more data until a second client receives the data. To avoid this, rTorrent continues to offer more pieces to the peers without waiting for confirmation, until it is uploading at its configured capacity. This improves... |
Vikings and winged helmets? | You could really cover all the basics of Iron Age Norse helmets in a few paragraphs. There are a few helmets from fancy ship burials in Sweden from the Vendel Age (550-800), the centuries preceding the Viking Age. Examples would be [Vendel I](_URL_8_) from Vendel (these very finds gave name to the age), [Vendel XIV](_URL_13_), [Valsgärde VII](_URL_7_) and [Valsgärde VIII](_URL_10_) from Valsgärde. The numbers are which grave they're from; the two sites are about 25 km from each other, both not far north of Old Uppsala in Uppland, Sweden. There's also the [Ulltuna helmet](_URL_0_) which is a bit different but with some common features. It's often remarked upon that these also have many similarities to the [Sutton Hoo helmet](_URL_16_) from England, which is contemporary Anglo-Saxon one, also from a fancy grave. This right here is most of the reasonably-complete helmets contemporary with the Vendel Age. For instance from Norway there are only 3 confirmed helmet fragments from the era.
As these are elaborate grave goods from elaborate royal tombs (that contained ships, animal sacrifices and lots and lots of other stuff), they probably don't represent what the average Sven was wearing at the time. It also seems a bit unlikely someone would go into battle with a garnet-encrusted helmet like Valsgärde VII. Which hasn't stopped plenty of Viking fiction for utilizing the designs though.
There are also decorations from the Vendel Age such as the [Torslunda plaes](_URL_11_) which depict apparently-ceremonial helmets with boars and animals on them, and one guy with big horned helmets and a bear-like warrior. (we don't really know exactly what these depict, although there's no shortage of theories) A similar picture of guys with big-horned helmets holding spears, is on the Sutton Hoo helmet. Together these are called the ['dancing warrior'](_URL_17_) motif. It's possible this referred to some kind of ceremonial helmet that actually existed in the Vendel Period, but we haven't found one. (it's not the source of the horned-viking helmet idea though) The type of helmet with the boar has been found in England, with the [Benty Grange helmet](_URL_3_) (7th cent). Again showing cultural connections between the Norse and Anglo Saxon world.
But from the Viking Age, there is only a single helmet fragment that's reasonably whole, which is the [Gjermundbu helmet](_URL_12_), dated to the 950s. It's a simpler and less design than the Vendel helmets but similar, and was formerly decked out with gold, and likely had the same ceremonial purpose. The [Lokrume fragment](_URL_2_) from Gotland and [Tjele fragment](_URL_15_) from Denmark. Both fragments are of the characteristic 'eyebrow' bits which is how they could easily be identified as helmet fragments.
There are a couple more fragments but this is basically it, all the known helmet and helmet fragments from Viking Age Scandinavia and the preceding three centuries.
So not only no horns nor wings, but not a heck of a lot of evidence they even wore helmets _at all._ Now, the Sagas and Eddas do mention the wearing of helmets here and there. Some of them are even made of gold. And that's the thing; the stories are about kings and heroes and gods, so again we can't expect them to tell us much about the regular people.
There _are_ Viking Age artistic depictions of helmets though; such as the [Rällinge statue](_URL_4_). This figure, which has been suggested to represent Freyr (on the basis of him having an erection, ergo fertility god) is wearing a pointy helmet with a nose guard. You can find a similar helmet depicted on the 11th century [Ledberg Stone](_URL_1_) (which has been suggested to be Odin despite the cross on the stone, mainly on the basis of him holding a spear). These kinds of helmets - [nasal helmets](_URL_5_) did exist in contemporary Europe. Quite famously there's a lot of them on the [Bayeux tapestry](_URL_14_) illustrating William the Conqueror's conquest of England (so, 1066).
But as we've seen, if vikings had nasal helmets, they've not left any concrete trace of it. (by comparison, there have been thousands of spear-tips and hundreds of swords found) So if you assume they did have these helmets, the question is why they're not here. (not least when there's often so much other stuff in graves) And that just requires further assumptions so you don't really get anywhere.
So there's no real consensus about actual Viking helmets; whether they had any or what they looked like if they did. One narrative is that they may have had less-ornate versions of the Vendel/Valsgärde helmets in that period, and Gjermundbu being end-of-the line model as they shifted over to nasal helmets. At the opposite end of the spectrum, one could imagine they had no helmets at all, except for these ceremonial/status-symbol ones.
The portrayal of Vikings as having horned helmets as well as winged helmets are thus not based in history at all but 19th century Viking-Romantic imagery. For instance, the Swedish painter August Malmström's paintings [illustrating Frithiof's Saga](_URL_6_) he gave the hero a winged helmet. Otherwise _horned_ helmets seem to belong mainly to the English Viking-Romantic art, such as [Dicksee's "Funeral of a Viking"](_URL_9_). (also illustrating the burning-ship-burial trope) The costume design for Wagner's Ring Cycle is often credited with creating the horned-helmet trope, and if so it likely created or contributed much to the winged-helmet trope as well, as there are plenty of winged helmets in it too. (e.g. Brunnhilde often has one)
So anyway, we know so little that if you've read this far, you too are now a bit of an expert on Viking Age helmets. But there's every reason to hope and believe another find will be made some day that'll advance our knowledge on the topic. (actually so many large burial mounds remain unexcavated it's practically a guarantee another helmet find will be made, some day)
| [
"Viking helmets were conical, made from hard leather with wood and metallic reinforcement for regular troops. The iron helmet with mask and mail was for the chieftains, based on the previous Vendel-age helmets from central Sweden. The only original Viking helmet discovered is the Gjermundbu helmet, found in Norway.... |
How did Hitler finance the industrial build up to WW2? The story’s of wheelbarrow bread buyers would make one assume it be impossible to ramp up such huge industrial undertaking... where did the money come from? | He did the same thing most modern economies do. Deficit spending.
Hitler and his Finance minister, Hjalmar Schacht, knew that simply printing money to pay for rearmament would lead to inflation, so they decided to re-finance industry by using credit. Schacht and the largest German industrial firms teamed up and issued "Mefo" bills. Mefo was short for "Mettalurgische Forschungsgesellschaft" - Mettalurgical Research corporation.
Simply put, they used these bills instead of money. They were guaranteed by the state and could be exchanged for Cash at the Reichsbank. They also regulated the Mefo bills so each bill issued was tied to a batch of newly produced goods. This way, they were able to avoid inflation. Unfortunately, this eventually led to a huge amount of internal state Debt, which was fine for Hitler. His end goal was to expand his "German Reich" by invading Europe, and debt gave him the opportunity to make everyone see things his way.
To make the most of the opportunities presented by the Mefo Bills, Hitler also instituted other controls. First and foremost, Hitler cracked down on labor unions not affiliated with the Nazis. This was intended to stop unions from advocating for rights and benefits for workers, which allowed Employers and Big Businesses to spend more money on investing to expand their businesses, since they could cut down on their Employees' wages and other assorted benefits. Also, in order to be able to participate in the Mefo scheme, Businesses would have to agree to re-invest most of their earnings (62%) into rearmament and the economy.
In summary, the money came from thin air. Hitler and Schacht issued Mefo bills that were essentially promissory notes/IOUs, which German big businesses used as credit to finance rearmament.
References
_URL_1_
_URL_0_
ETA: links and spelling fixed | [
"After the war, Albert Speer claimed that the German economy achieved greater armaments output, not because of diversions of capacity from civilian to military industry but through streamlining of the economy. Richard Overy pointed out some 23 percent of German output was military by 1939. Between 1937 and 1939, 70... |
how do artists who don't make their own music... get their music? | Songs are bought by music producers from writers either on spec or commissioned and then given to the artist to test out and possibly record. Commercial music artists pretty much just record the vocals of songs in studios, and then they are mixed with hired gun musicians (aka studio musicians). They are the front of businesses, they don't have a lot to say on what they sing or what is released. They're expensive popular employees. | [
"Musicians often use this license for self-promotion. For instance, a cellist who performed a musical work on a recording may obtain a mechanical license so he can distribute copies of the recording to others as an example of his cello playing. Recording artists also use this when they record cover versions of song... |
Why did the Neanderthals (200,000 BCE - 30,000 BCE) start burying their dead? | Not to discourage any responses, but this is more of a question for /r/askanthropology/ since it pre-dates written history. | [
"Though disputed, evidence suggests that the Neanderthals were the first humans to intentionally bury the dead, doing so in shallow graves along with stone tools and animal bones. Exemplary sites include Shanidar in Iraq, Kebara Cave in Israel and Krapina in Croatia. Some scholars, however argue that these bodies m... |
why are gas stations still advertising gas as unleaded? | Not all engines that use gasoline use unleaded gasoline. It's best to specify lest somebody fill up their gas tank and find their engine doesn't work. | [
"Due to heavy fluctuations of gasoline price in the United States, some gas stations offer their customers the option to buy and store gas for future uses, such as the service provided by First Fuel Bank.\n",
"Generic Advertisement Service (GAS): An IEEE 802.11u service that provides over-the-air transportation f... |
physiologically how do some scents cause certain animals to panic in fear even if they are naive to the origin of the scent? | Not about smells but there's a cool paper on how water fleas develop protective helmets and longer tail spines in response to a chemical from a fish predator.
Even if they've never met the fish before they will develop these traits. This means that the response was inherited from their parents because they realise that the chemical means "crap there's a fish better armour up so it doesn't eat me" and that message was passed through their DNA.
They also found that if the populations weren't exposed to the fish predators for many generations then they respond slower. So the link between the chemical and the need to protect themselves gets weaker over time if they haven't seen the fish in a while.
Here's a blog about the paper, probably explains it better than me: _URL_0_
| [
"When people are confronted with unpleasant and potentially harmful stimuli such as foul odors or tastes, PET-scans show increased bloodflow in the amygdala. In these studies, the participants also reported moderate anxiety. This might indicate that anxiety is a protective mechanism designed to prevent the organism... |
Might the radioactive water from Fukushima create radioactive rain on the west coast of the United States? | There is a [team in Berkeley which measures radiation in rainwater](_URL_0_). They found some I-131 during the weeks after the meltdown, but quickly fell below detectable levels, and has stayed that way ever since.
Food took a little bit longer, but they [haven't found anything in quite a while at this point](_URL_1_). | [
"A year after the disaster, in April 2012, sea fish caught near the Fukushima power plant still contain as much radioactive Cs and Cs compared to fish caught in the days after the disaster. At the end of October 2012 TEPCO admitted that it could not exclude radioactivity releases into the ocean, although the radiat... |
Sensitive, somewhat weepy male characters abound in late 18th c. Gothic novels and are not presented as unmanly or unattractive. Is there any truth in the claim I've occasionally seen that men's crying was more socially acceptable before the Industrial Revolution than it has been ever since? | I was hailed by a mod. I have barely posted here in years, but this is fun and I love this stuff. Forgive my rustiness, I am in another career field now.
Let's go!
All this socially acceptable crying is part of a movement called Romanticism.
Romanticism comes to us on the heels of the Napoleonic challenge; Napoleon Bonaparte has gone and overthrown the balance of Europe, and the region is righting itself again after war. Decades of it. Three million people in Europe are dead because of the French Revolution and Napoleon's grab for power, you've got conservatism rising to denounce revolution as anarchy, you've got a demand to return to "property rights, prejudice, and tradition." (Thanks, Edmond Burke.) And you know what prejudice is? Old traditions. Burke says things based on thousands of years of tradition deserve respect! The throne and the altar are important pillars of strength, and by going against them, you've undermined all of society! If we're going to restore the countries of Europe to some sort of stability and power, let the old traditions be our moral compass!
You know what that means?
Constitutional monarchy is back! So the monarchies have been restored, most based on legitimacy, including the French one.
Do we have the order that everyone wanted?
No! It's never that easy!
The British aristocracy doesn't want to loosen its grip; they suspended habeas corpus so they could war with France, suppressing their own population with the abolishment of rights of man and freedom of expression, as well as the criminalization of demands for political reform. (This is where the Peterloo Massacre happens.) And over in France, Napoleon has left a power vacuum of censorship, and the revamped education system has kicked out any trace of liberalism, giving the Church serious power. And if you keep going East, it gets harsher; Austria is laying down the Metternich system in the Germanic states, which will rule for the next forty years, blacklisting anyone who speaks in the behalf of nationalism, and blacklisting means you'll never find a job in any German state. University students and professors are by far hit the hardest, particularly as the tiny educated minority group. Russia has Alexander wiping out any trace of liberalism to the point that liberal roots *still* haven't taken much in Russia even today. The more East-ward you go, the more authoritarian and tight the regime.
Please, God, who will help us in this age of stodgy, unthinking, unfeeling tradition that wants to shove us all back in our little boxes after years of revolution had promised us FREEDOM?!
**ARTISTS!**
Artists become the main social voice criticizing social order, and they make up Romanticism. And Romanticism *is* liberalism; it's fighting all the things that tie down literature and art and society, and well, it's romantic –– it's about *feelings*, one's mood!
Think of the artists from this time period. Musicians like Beethoven, Chopin, Rossini, Liszt. Writers like Goethe, Novalis, Heine, Byron, Hugo! And the visual arts –– Friedrich, Turner, Delacroix! Art can be passionate in any time period, but now the Feelings are out. It's dialed up to 11 at all times. Even a painting of a shipwreck is *actually* about destiny and what nature decides and how no man can guarantee his actions because life is unexpected! (The Shipwreck by Turner.) And you're not just marching to liberate your country, you're marching with Liberty herself, a beautiful naked woman who is the purity of your revolution, your demand for a better society! Everything is dramatic! (Liberty Leading The People by Delacroix.)
And literature! One particularly popular piece of literature is "The Sorrows of Young Werther" by Goethe. It is exactly as the title suggests, about how crap poor Werther's life is, particularly due to unrequited love, and then he –– spoiler alert! –– kills himself and nobody even goes to his funeral! This book is an immediate success, to the tune of inspiring hundreds (if not thousands) of young men to kill themselves because of their own tortured love affairs. It even prompts a fanfic in response that rewrites the ending so Werther lives, and lives happily at that, and Goethe isn't very pleased and it's all crazy. Crazy passionate.
And Byron –– oh lord, Byron. Despite Britain being home to some of the coldest and stiffest lips, Byron and his crowd make up the best of the Romantic writers, and Byron writes with *feeling*, and he demands open hearts of young men. He writes his teenage boys with emotional turmoil, and the love letters pour in from fangirls; imagine that, men with feelings! And when Byron's passion leads him to sleeping with people you weren't supposed to be sleeping with in that time period, he has to flee to avoid execution, and he decides to just make lemonade out of lemons and travels to Italy and Greece to take up the cause of liberalism! (He died doing this; tragic and romantic in life and death, which netted him a massive funeral attended mostly by young women.) And his good pal Percy Bysshe Shelley, also an incredible poet, has decided to denounce the church and promote atheism, and write essays criticizing British society! He dies in a shipwreck, hunted out of Britain, tragic and romantic.
And Beethoven, Beethoven who had liked Napoleon, until Napoleon decided to go and declare himself emperor, the ultimate of selfish power grabs. Beethoven scratches out the dedication to Napoleon on his symphonies. Fuck megalomania, right?
And Chopin, a man of Polish descent when Poland is now largely under Russian control; he felt the only way he could keep his prestige and the spirit of Poland was to bring Polish elements into his music, and so his music includes those elements to piss off the Russians *as a rebellion.*
And have you ever heard of that song, Lisztomania by Phoenix? It's great, and very catchy. It's referencing Lisztomania, a hysteria for the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, whose mere presence could drive people into an emotional mania. Even the fellow who coined this term, writer Heinrich Heine, noted this hysteria to be politically motivated: "I shrugged my shoulders pityingly [...] [I] looked on it as a sign of the politically unfree conditions existing beyond the Rhine..." And yet he, too, was swept up in the audience's applause and outpouring of emotions at the concert.
So that's what you're seeing: art meet politics often, and it offered a new interpretation for life. Enlightenment promoted the mind, but without a heart you’re a robot. And at this point in history, you might as well throw everything to the wind and put all your feelings out there. Fucking cry, Werther!
TL;DR: Nothing is more manly than crying during a revolution.
Sources:
* John Merriman, Modern Europe vol.2
* T.C.W. Blanning, The Nineteenth Century
* Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders, Europe 1800-1914
* And some old-ass lecture notes from the wonderful V. Dimitriadis of the University of Toronto's Department of History. :') | [
"In the 1670s and 1680s, a gradual shift occurred from heroic to pathetic tragedy, where the focus was on love and domestic concerns, even though the main characters might often be public figures. After the phenomenal success of Elizabeth Barry in moving the audience to tears in the role of Monimia in Thomas Otway'... |
Pre 1800s how was money transferred between bank accounts across different countries? | I answered a very similar question [here](_URL_0_)
In your specific case of traveling to Italy from the US pre-1800, I am not sure. But, generally,, you would look to find and pay a merchant or bank that did enough business there to make up a letter of credit that said, essentially, pay John Smith 1,000 ducats. When you arrived, you would go to that other merchant or bank and present your letter. There would be signatures on file and on the document to be compared, that could discourage fraud. There would be a discount- i.e. they might only pay you , say, 950 ducats. There might also be a delay: they might hold the note and ask for someone to vouch for you. You might also get a couple of letters, for different banks, etc., as you might not know until you got there really whether a note/letter was good. | [
"Generally, a central bank or treasury is solely responsible within a state or currency union for the issue of banknotes. However, this is not always the case, and historically the paper currency of countries was often handled entirely by private banks. Thus, many different banks or institutions may have issued ban... |
what happens when you cancel an installation process? | If the program has a GOOD installer, then it will go back and delete any files and revert back any registry changes it may have made. If the installer is crap it will just leave everything right where it was, which can sometimes cause problems if you try to install the program again.
If you forcekill the installer from ctrl+alt+del, then it doesn't have a chance to reverse anything and all the files/registry changes sit right where they are. | [
"All installation operations are transactional. In other words, for each operation that Windows Installer performs, it generates an equivalent undo operation that would revert the change made to the system. In case any script action fails during deferred execution, or the operation is cancelled by the user, all the... |
why can't i just drink water and eat bread (or some such food for calories) and take in all other nutrients via vitamins or supplements and be healthy? | First, you're going to be healthiest with the appropriate protein/carb/fat balance. Bread has WAY too many carbs, and it's typically not a complete protein. But assume you had a food that did have the right balance, and included complete proteins. Would that work?
Probably, yes. The risk you run is that you don't get any vitamin-like substances which we haven't yet identified as such. But you probably won't suffer from any malnutrition, you just won't get the benefit. | [
"Dietary supplements contain one or more dietary ingredients (including vitamins; minerals; amino acids; herbs or other botanicals; and other substances) or their constituents is intended to be taken by mouth as a pill, capsule, tablet, or liquid. Athletes may choose to consider taking dietary supplements to assist... |
why does money go to the hundredths decimal place? | We use base-10 so we like to dived things by 10. Dividing by 10 twice gives you 1/100. Divide by ten again and you get 1/1000 which is now ~~(and has always been)~~ too small to be useful for transactions. So, 1/100 **used to be** the smallest [order of magnitude](_URL_1_) of our currencies that was still useful for making transactions. [Now, because of inflation, it's completely worthless.](_URL_0_) | [
"A decimal currency is a currency where the ratio between the main unit and the subunit is an integral power of 10. Non-decimal currencies are now rare but had some advantages in daily life transactions. For example, 1 South German Gulden = 60 Kreuzer. 60 can be divided into 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 or 30 part... |
Is there any material/chemocal that can go from a solid to a gas and skip the liquid state? | There are lots, its not a property of the material so much as its a property of its tempature/pressure. Remember that water has different boiling points at diffrent pressures. Low pressure, low temp required, however at higher pressure (think pressure cooker) higher tempatures are required to boil (change into a gas) the water
the solid to gas transition is called Sublimation. Wiki page here: _URL_0_ | [
"Liquid–liquid extraction is possible in non-aqueous systems: In a system consisting of a molten metal in contact with molten salts, metals can be extracted from one phase to the other. This is related to a mercury electrode where a metal can be reduced, the metal will often then dissolve in the mercury to form an ... |
how much does "data" cost internet/service providers? where does the actual overhead come from? | The overhead comes from running an extremely complex network with lots of infrastructure that requires highly trained and specialized engineers operating significant portions of it. Depending on what kind of a connection you're looking at setting up, your minimum entry cost is tens of thousands of dollars for a simple connection to millions of dollars for more complex connections. If you were laying an undersea cable, your costs could easily get into the hundreds of millions of dollars depending on the scope and complexity of your project. | [
", only 40% of internet connections now have a fixed data cap. Once users have exceeded their data cap, they typically have the option of having the speed limited to 64-128 kbit/s for the rest of the month or paying for any extra data used. Most RSP's (retail service providers) offer unlimited data plans. On averag... |
why does amazon constantly have "sales" with $0.03 off? | For me, it's a classic marketing trick.
Pure and simply; it's designed to get you in the store or at least looking at the item.
Just because it's $0.03 off, doesn't mean it's not technically a sale.
It's like when a store has a massive sign outside saying "50% OFF SALE!". Most people fail to see the "Up To" in small writing before the 50%.
You walk in, and almost everything is still full price. You get angry and leave.
Technically, the store isn't lying. They do have 50% off, but it's on, say, a pair of socks nobody wants. As long as they have 1 item for 50% off, they can legally put a big sign outside advertising said 50% off.
People assume it applies to everything in store so they walk in. And the store layout/design kicks in, designed to draw your eye to X items. You forget about the sale, and you see something you like, so you buy it.
You probably wouldn't have gone in if it weren't for the massive 50% off sign outside the store.
Same thing applies here.
Amazon are doing it to draw your eye.
People are constantly looking for deals where they can save money, so they see the red line through the price and a new price next to it and BAM, you've got a savings. Suddenly, the person is interested. Everyone wants to save money.
Combine that with the methods I'm sure Amazon employ to reduce tax payments and maximize profits through financial algorithms, and it's in Amazon's best interest to apply said "sales". | [
"In January 2017, Amazon.ca was required by the Competition Bureau to pay a $1M penalty, plus $100,000 in costs, over pricing practices for failing to provide \"truth in advertising\" according to Josephine Palumbo, the deputy commissioner for deceptive marketing practices. This fine was levied because some product... |
Could giant humans survive? | I don't know the specific answer, but [this article](_URL_0_) deals with some of the problems of scaling up. | [
"Humans were the least affected. The only thing they have lost was their original size and duration of life. Along with being giants, the first humans were believed to have had larger eyes and bigger bones than the present. Roog did not touch the human spirit. Instead, it allowed them to develop their minds and put... |
How 'German' was Eastern Prussia under Frederick the Great? | Just to correct a few things first: That doesn't correspond to the modern Baltic states, which are further northeast, that's broadly the north and west of modern Poland and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, formerly Königsberg. It's also a map of Prussia under the German Empire (1871-1918), not a map of Prussia under Frederick the Great ([see here](_URL_0_) for the latter).
East Prussia corresponds to the original Duchy of Prussia, or so-called *Altpreußen* (Old Prussia). From the 13th century, this area had been colonised by Germans, originally under the aegis of the Teutonic Order, which had aimed to convert the region to Christianity. The Teutonic state *did* extend up to the modern Baltic states, but these areas, then known as Courland and Livonia, were culturally mixed -- though after they were subsumed by Russia, they remained dominated by a German aristocracy until the fall of the Russian Empire.
The area that became Ducal Prussia was more firmly Germanised, and certainly by the time of Frederick the Great in the 18th century there was little doubt that it was, essentially, German. Königsberg was the capital of East Prussia and became a seat of German-speaking culture under Frederick, paying host to philosophers such as Immanuel Kant.
This situation prevailed more or less up until the end of the Second World War, when the Polish borders were rearranged by the victorious Soviets, who incorporated the eastern territories of Poland while compensating the Poles by awarding them eastern Germany. A process of ethnic cleansing then took place whereby Germans were forcibly expelled and Poles resettled in the area. At the same time, Königsberg was annexed to the Soviet Union and renamed Kaliningrad, again coupled with a policy of ethnic cleansing and resettlement. That area remains a Russian province to this day, despite having been cut off from the rest of Russia by the fall of the Soviet Union. | [
"East Prussia (, ; ; ; ; ) was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 1871); following World War I it formed part of the Weimar Republic's Free State of Prussia, until 1945. Its capital city was Königsberg (present-day... |
Why do some ants have such a high brain to body mass ratio? | As the article you linked to, along with [this one](_URL_1_) describe, brain size does not scale linearly (isometrically) with body size. Instead, it scales *allometrically*, proportional to approximately (body mass)^(k), where the exponent k is somewhere around 0.5 to 0.75 (depending on the group of animals being studied; it's ~0.7 for mammals). This means that in terms of percentage total body mass, small animals have larger relative brain size. As a measure of intelligence relative to body size, it is therefore more typical to look at how much an animal's brain size deviates from the expected size for an animal for that size. For example, both humans and mice have brains that weigh ~2-3% of their total body mass. Since humans are much larger, they would be expected to have a lower percentage than mice. The fact that they do not suggests higher relative intelligence. Ants, being very small animals, have a very high percentage brain mass.
As to why this scaling law is the case, that is not known. However, it is one of several well known allometric scaling laws in biology, all with exponents in a similar range. One reason mentioned by the wikipedia article is that neurons have approximately the same size in all species, although this is now known [not to be true](_URL_0_). Nevertheless, some type of 'overhead' may play a role in this relationship. For example, certain neuronal circuits are required for basic functions, e.g., breathing. Such circuits need not necessarily involve 100 times as many neurons in species that are 100 times larger, since they serve the same basic function. [This paper](_URL_2_) confirms that different brain structures scale differently with body size. Nevertheless, the exact reason for the scaling relationship of brain mass with body size is not known.
**TL;DR:** Brain mass scales with body size, such that smaller animals tend to have a higher percentage brain mass. The reason for this is not yet known. | [
"It is also important to note that the measure of brain mass or volume, seen as cranial capacity, or even relative brain size, which is brain mass that is expressed as a percentage of body mass, are not a measure of intelligence, use, or function of regions of the brain. Total neurons, however, also do not indicate... |
If Einstein hasn't came up with relativity was anyone else working on the similar theories? | (As a warning, I got slightly jargony in this post.
SR = special relativity
GR = general relativity
c = speed of light
EM = electromagetism
B-field = magnetic field)
First off, SR probably would have been developed within a few years of Einstein's publication. This is because the root problem that Einstein was trying to address using SR was actually very well known to the physics community at the turn of the last century, and had to do with the behavior of Maxwell's Equations near the speed of light. Maxwell's Equations are the set of four equations that completely describe electromagnetic interactions and wave propagation in free space, and are one of the intellectual triumphs of physics (SR/GR being one of the others).
The problem facing physicists around 1900 was that Maxwell's Equations begin to break as you approach the speed of light. Specifically, an observer traveling at a substantial fraction of c with some EM system in front of them (at the same velocity) would see completely different system properties than a stationary observer watching the same system. As one example, the stationary observer would see an electric current in the system (due to the system's velocity), which would generate a magnetic field, but the traveling observer would see a set of stationary charges and hence no B-field. The is physically impossible, so people recognized that something was wrong somewhere.
The initial solution was created by Hendrik Lorentz, who devised a set of frame transformations, now known as the "Lorentz" transformations, that allowed Maxwell's Equations to act correctly near the speed of light. These are in contrast to the Galilean transformations that govern our day-to-day lives, and which were being applied previously.
So that's the background. The crucial insight that Einstein had that led him to SR was the physical interpretation of the transformations. Namely, that they implied that the speed of light is the same for all observers, the speed of light is a sort of universal speed limit, and that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial (non-accelerated) reference frames. Since the Lorentz transformations also change the relative passage of time between two reference frames traveling at two different velocities, Einstein also realized that the "distance" between two events needed to be described using a single "spacetime" distance, rather than separate distances in space and in time. That got him to treating space and time as a single 4-dimensional construct.
The experimental, theoretical, and mathematical basis for SR were thus all pretty well established when Einstein came along. All he needed to do was to assemble all of the disparate pieces and assemble them into a unified system of thought. So it seems very reasonable to suppose that if Einstein had not developed SR in 1905, some one else would have gotten there within a few years.
(N.B. - I say "all he had to do," but that in no way is meant to trivialize what Einstein accomplished. As was demonstrated 20 years later in the development of Quantum Mechanics, the experiments and the math are often the relatively easy bits. It's figuring out what it all actually means that is hard.)
Once you have SR developed, getting to GR is the next logical step. Recall that SR deals with inertial (non-accelerating) reference frames. GR is the extension of SR to also account for accelerating frames (both via gravity and via something like rockets). This makes GR considerably more complicated than SR, but the basic ideas behind it, or at least the idea that you need to figure it out, are all in place once you've got SR worked out.
Once major practical difference in GR that would probably arise of Einstein had never existed is the notation used to do the calculations and display the results. Einstein actually invented his own new mathematical notation to help with GR calculations, and this is now known as "Einstein" notation. It allows one to compactly write out and work with linear algebra operations.
Without Einstein, it seems reasonable that this specific notation would not have been developed. Insofar as a notation system influences how we think about what we're working with, this would have then changed how people dealt with and interpreted the results of alternate-GR. A nice example of what I mean here would be to look at the different views of Calculus coming from Leibniz's and Newton's notation for the same problems.
Source: I have a PhD in astrophysics. | [
"Several experiments predating Einstein's 1905 paper are now interpreted as evidence for relativity. Of these it is known Einstein was aware of the Fizeau experiment before 1905, and historians have concluded that Einstein was at least aware of the Michelson–Morley experiment as early as 1899 despite claims he made... |
how do zero gravity pens work? | They inject pressurized gas into the ink capsule, that constantly pushes the ink toward the tip regardless of gravity or orientation. | [
"BULLET::::- The Space Pen, also known as the Zero Gravity Pen, is a pen that uses pressurized ink cartridges and is claimed to write in zero gravity, upside down, underwater, over wet and greasy paper, at any angle, and in extreme temperature ranges. The ballpoint is made from tungsten carbide and is precisely fit... |
Where do the photons go after the light is turned off in the room? | They get absorbed by the surroundings! Photons are electromagnetic waves, so when they come to matter, they "wave" the electrons in the matter around, so the photons lose their energy are are absorbed. This is why a wall in the sun feels hot! The light is being absorbed by the wall and all energy goes into the wall feeling hot.
As a side note, this is a simplification. Like mirrors don't absorb light, they reflect it. For that matter, most materials reflect some amount of light, that's why we can see them. But all materials absorb light, even in small amounts, so eventually all the light would be absorbed by the material. | [
"Note that, because the points of emission of the photons can be at any place on the (normally straight line) trajectory of the particle through the radiator, the emerging photons fill a light-cone in space.\n",
"If a single photon is emitted into the entry port of the apparatus at the lower-left corner, it immed... |
how is it possible that sites like _url_0_ or any other movie streaming service violating copyright laws are still up and running? | Not hosted on a server in the United States, perhaps? | [
"Professor Jukka Kemppinen, an expert on copyright legislation, states that Pirate Cinema is a deliberate provocation, but that, despite it being illegal, there is no point in making a big issue out of it. Kemppinen states \"It is no more illegal than showing a legally rented DVD to residents of an apartment buildi... |
How can a paper cup full of water not burn up on a 2400 degree billet of steel? | The reason is that, perhaps surprisingly, the paper simply does not get hot enough. Paper has an autoignition temperature (the temperature at which it will burst into flame) of about 210-250^o C. If you were to just put an empty paper cup on the hot steel, it would rapidly reach this temperature and start burning. However, with water in the cup the situation is different. The presence of water on the other side of the wall of paper will reduce the rate at which the paper can be heated by the steel because it will cool the material. This cooling can be fairly efficient since [convection](_URL_0_) will cause hot water to move away from the walls, letting cool water replace it. Once you reach 100^o C, the water will start boiling. However the temperature of the water will not rise any further at that point, because as happens at any phase transition, all the extra heat added to the system will go into that driving that transition (boiling).
So surprising as it may sound, you can get into a steady state regime, where even if the water is hot enough to boil, because this process occurs at 100^o C, the boiling water may still be "cool" enough to prevent the paper from going above 210^o C(ish) and burn. | [
"The second section of the paper machine is the press section, which removes much of the remaining water via a system of nips formed by rolls pressing against each other aided by press felts that support the sheet and absorb the pressed water. The paper web consistency leaving the press section can be above 40%.\n"... |
what is a probation? | Basically means he can live feely as long as he abides by certain conditions (not out after certain time, keep the peace, and/or abstain from drugs/alcohol, etc...). | [
"Probation is a period of time where an offender lives under supervision and under a set of restrictions. Violations of these restrictions could result in arrest. Probation is typically an option for first time offenders with high rehabilitative capacity. At its core, it is \"a substitute for prison\", with the goa... |
what's the religious situation in the us? | Westboro Baptist Church isn't a religion. It's a bigoted and angry old man and his family. There are a couple members that aren't related to the Phelps family. There are a lot of family members who have dropped out of the church as well. | [
"The religious and cultural holidays in the United States is characterized by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. However, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that \"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..... |
what is the ndaa and why did obama veto it? | It's basically a defense spending bill. He vetoed it because it had provisions that prohibited removing spending cuts and prohibited the closing of Guantanamo Bay.
[sauce](_URL_0_) | [
"On September 30, 2015, President Barack Obama threatened to veto the NDAA 2016. The reason for the veto threat by the Obama administration was that the bill bypassed the Budget Control Act of 2011 spending caps by allocating nearly $90 billion to the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account, designating routi... |
Does our moon have a name in common english? | The proper English name for the moon is "the Moon". ([source](_URL_0_)). "Luna" is sometimes used in literature, and is the name of the Roman goddess that was the personified moon to the Romans. | [
"Every human language has its own word for the Earth's Moon, and these words are the ones normally used in astronomical contexts. However, a number of fanciful or mythological names for the Moon have been used in the context of astronomy (an even larger number of lunar epithets have been used in non-astronomical co... |
absolute and apparent magnitude | Apparent magnitude is how bright a star appears to an observer on Earth. Absolute magnitude is a measure of how bright the star would appear to an observer on earth if the star were 10 parsecs away.
Absolute magnitude allows astronomers to compare the inherent brightness of stars since the variations caused by distance are removed. | [
"Absolute magnitude () is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object, on an inverse logarithmic astronomical magnitude scale. An object's absolute magnitude is defined to be equal to the apparent magnitude that the object would have if it were viewed from a distance of exactly , without extinction (or dimmin... |
If Ulysses S Grant was such a bad president why is he on the $50 bill? | It's less to do with the substance of his Presidency, and more to do with him winning the Civil War for the United States as a General, and then being elected to the Presidency. When Grant first appeared on a $50 gold certificate in 1913, he'd been dead for nearly 30 years: long enough to forgive some of the bad things, and recent enough to remember the hero. | [
"According to historian John Y. Simon, had Grant served only one term of office, he would have been considered a great President by more historians, particularly noted for his successful negotiations of the \"Alabama Claims\" under his Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, his strong enforcement of civil rights for bla... |
To what extent did the typical 15th/16th century European peasant know about/be affected by the Age of Exploration? | Well, there was the introduction of the potato, sugar (in loaves) from canes (as opposed to beets) and coffee. Oh, and tobacco. | [
"In the wake of the Age of Exploration, roughly between the 15th and 18th centuries, there was an explosion in the number of commodities and availability of products. People were using newly created cartography and using these maps to explore the world on paper. There was an accumulation of more objects and a desir... |
what the different url means | They're just supposed to denote what kind of organisation is using the website. The usual .com was originally intended for commercial sites, .org for nonprofit organisations, and .net for networking technologies (guess what .tv was supposed to be used for?), but they ended up being unrestricted so anyone can use mostly anything (.mil and .gov are obvious examples of ones that aren't open to public use). There are also country-specific ones that are an offshoot, ._URL_0_ (British site) and .de (German site) being the most commonly seen ones, but most countries again don't really restrict their usage. | [
"As such, a URL is simply a URI that happens to point to a resource over a network. However, in non-technical contexts and in software for the World Wide Web, the term \"URL\" remains widely used. Additionally, the term \"web address\" (which has no formal definition) often occurs in non-technical publications as a... |
What is the current Academic consensus - Anglo-Saxon Invasion, Anglo-Saxon Migration or none of the above? | 'It's complicated.'
There are a few different ways to approach this question.
**Textual accounts**
The first, and the method longest favored, has been to trust the written sources. These include Gildas' sermon, Bede, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and other later texts. Each tells a slightly different version of the arrival, in boats, of Saxon mercenaries who turn on the hapless Britains, conquering and/or enslaving and/or driving them from England into the hills of Wales.
You are correct that these texts are no longer trusted, however. Why? First, scholars have done a lot of legwork to track down Bede's sources, and it's very clear that Bede based his account of the Anglo-Saxon arrival directly on Gildas. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (which, remember, was written 400 years after these events) gives no indication of having any other unique sources either. Hence, these are not actually three separate accounts that agree, but one story, repeated two additional times. If we read Gildas, we're on the same footing as Bede.
So what happens when we read Gildas? Late Antique historians have, for the past 30 years, done a lot of really good work studying the genre and literary function of ancient and early medieval texts. What I mean by this is that we've come to recognize that ancient texts weren't written by people who necessarily were interested in telling the same kinds of stories we assume they are. A modern historian would, for instance, be interested in knowing precisely what people did, and how these actions influenced the events that followed. Late Antique authors, however, were often much more interested in how people's actions communicated their *moral* virtue, and hence tend to write stories where our ability to understand whether someone was good or bad is privileged over strict attention to causality. The author of the Historia Augusta doesn't tell us about Elagabalus' kinky sex life so we know *why* he was assassinated; he tells us about it so we know that the emperor *deserved what he got*. The things that authors emphasize vary by genre, by the author's context, by the objectives of the piece they were writing -- lots of factors. So just as a good literary scholar much think hard about how to distill meaning from a work of fiction, we must approach our historical texts with great care if we want to know what they're really on about.
Gildas wrote a sermon, and the central theme is about the consequences of rebellion against God. He uses examples from the scriptures to warn of the consequences of sin, goes through a list of corruption practiced by five bad contemporary kings, criticized the contemporary church, and calls his listeners / readers to repent. He also uses a long example from history to set this up, and this comes at the beginning of the sermon. It's easy to read this example from history as an objective account, but we have to remember that it's actually an introduction meant to get us to the real issue Gildas cares about, which is the consequences of rebelling against God.
In this historical story, Gildas rattles off the history of Britain, and he frames it as a sequence of rebellion vs submission. The Britons were weak by themselves, but Rome conquered them and made them strong. They rebelled, which made them weak, but the Romans conquered them again and this was actually good because submission to Rome made them strong. Then the Romans gave them Christianity, and they got even stronger. But they rebelled *twice*: against the Romans (by sending a usurper, Magnus Maximus, to the Continent with their armies), and against God (by embracing the Pelagian heresy). And that made them weak.
This is where we get to the part that historians of the Anglo-Saxon conquest care about. Britain was being raided in the fifth century, and they asked for help -- Rome sent it, they were saved, but then the Romans left because the soldiers were needed elsewhere. Before they left, the Romans built a wall in the north (Hadrian's Wall?? Only, that was built 300 year earlier). Britain was raided a second time -- the Roman army came and saved them again, building another wall (the Antonine Wall? Again, the chronology is way off -- but ok). A third time, Britain called for aid -- and Rome was fighting off the Huns and could spare no men. So the British asked for Saxon mercenaries, and they came, and they stayed. Shortly thereafter, these mercenaries were burning down Romano-British towns, killing their inhabitants, and Britain was ruined. But GOD sent the last Roman, Ambrosius, who beat the Saxons at Badon Hill. The moral? Britain never should have rebelled in the first place. But GOD *will* help you get back on the right path after you've sinned. So repent now, before it's too late!
So -- what do we do with this as a historical document? It's actually very vague on details. There's no mention of Hengist or Horsa, the two brothers (both named 'horse') who supposedly led the Saxon mercenaries. Gildas, in fact, is talking about events as though he expects his audience to already know what's going on. And he's clearly embroidering the story to make it work for his story, adding dramatic elements like the construction of Hadrian's Wall in the fifth century to make the narrative more compelling. His real goal isn't to tell us what happened; it's to get his kings to repent and turn back to God. But there are some details lurking in the text that are probably true. So let's leave Gildas with a ?, and look at the next source of evidence.
| [
"In the fifth century, raids on Britain by continental peoples had developed into full-scale migrations. The newcomers are known to have included Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians, and there is evidence of other groups as well. These groups captured territory in the east and south of England, but at about the end ... |
How do astronauts tell how fast they are going in space? | It is just as valid for an astronaut to say they are still and all else is moving as it is to say the earth is still (we know it rotates on its axis and around the sun).
There will be someone on the ground telling them by radio their speed and position **relative** to the shuttle/satellite/station. | [
"There was no mass or power available in the LESS for an Inertial Measurement Unit to measure acceleration and tell the astronauts where they were, where they were going or how fast they would be getting there, or even for a radar altimeter to show altitude above the lunar surface.\n",
"In order to unambiguously ... |
if a non-english speaker learns english from a natural english speaker, why exactly do they have an accent? | It's not as easy as you think to "emulate sounds".
Basically, the older we get, the harder it is to learn new skills. Learning how to pronounce sounds is easy when you're a baby -- literally child's play. But once you're past puberty, it gets harder to learn new sounds.
To actually make intelligible sounds that mean something, a lot of things have to work very closely together. Your diaphragm, vocal cords, glottis, tongue, jaw and lips have to move in very precisely controlled ways and all in sync just to make the right sounds. This means creating neural pathways in the brain to deal with all this, something that gets harder as we get older.
It would be interesting to hear how you cope with learning a new foreign language. I would wager that no matter how good you think you are, you would have a very noticeable accent.
> If you learn a word, but cannot properly pronounce it, have you actually learned it?
Yes. You would be pronouncing it as best you could, given the limitations imposed by your own brain. You may know exactly what sounds you're aiming for, but you're simply not capable of getting them exactly right because your brain isn't wired up to cope with them. | [
"The speech of non-native English speakers may exhibit pronunciation characteristics that result from their imperfectly learning the sound system of English, either by transferring the phonological rules from their mother tongue into their English speech (\"interference\") or through implementing strategies similar... |
If Earth had a huge equatorial ocean like it did in the past, would it be possible we'd observe persistent hurricanes lasting months or even years, like a mini-version of Jupiter's great red spot? | Not quite.
Global winds and ocean currents on planets are based off numerous factors.
- The tilt of the planet (not just seasons, but if influences the amount of sunlight at the equator and the poles)
- Positioning of continents (alters ocean currents)
- Positioning of continents (warm and cold air)
- Speed of the planet rotation (Coriolis effect)
- Size of Planet
- What 'substances' are being involved (we still don't know for sure what is in the Great Red Spot).
If earth contained only land at the poles, and was just ocean from 60S to 60N, you would see some systematic weather. Earth (with continents) has ocean currents surround our continents and impact our climates.
An example: Western Europe should be Taiga (as Taiga forests usually occur around 60N and 60S). However, the Gulf Stream which hits the Eastern United States Seaboard provides warm currents to Europe; Europe, as we know, contains deciduous forest.
_____
Now about Jupiter and other planets:
It is not uncommon for gas giants to have bizarre weather. There is little 'atmosphere', let alone friction from the surface of the planet. We still don't know what makes the Great Red Spot 'exist'. A theory is that hot gases rise to higher levels, eddies form, and ultimately fuel the Great Red Spot.
Anticyclonic storms, or storms which 'spin' in the wrong direction (like Great Red Spot), are not impacted by the Coriolis effect because they are so 'small' compared to the planet's size. We know this because tornados on Earth can sometimes spin backwards.
| [
"Storms do not only occur on Earth; other planetary bodies with a sufficient atmosphere (gas giants in particular) also undergo stormy weather. The Great Red Spot on Jupiter provides a well-known example. Though technically an anticyclone, with greater than hurricane wind speeds, it is larger than the Earth and has... |
What physical properties make Iron, Cobalt and Nickel ferromagnetic? | It is complicated. Paramagnetism and diamagnetism can be explained in terms of electron spins and electron orbital motion around an atom. If there are too many spins that are unpaired then the spins align with the field (para), if the spins are paired then the spins play no role and it is all about orbital motion which opposes the field (dia).
For transition metals it is more complicated, because you cannot longer see the problem in the atom by atom picture. Iron, cobalt and nickel have important electron electron interactions that give rise to interesting phenomena. You have to consider the whole material, and think it terms of energy bands. The bands of transition metals are very narrow and large. This materials have unfilled "d-bands", one for up spins and one for down spins and interactions may favor one of this bands. As the bands are very large, even having a slight difference between the two bands, means having a lot of electrons pointing at the same direction.
If a field is applied electrons may point in the direction of the field. Surely, not all unpaired bands can point in the same direction in the material because it would be too energetic. But, you can have different domains in your material to counteract this effect. Anyhow, the direction of the magnetic field would be preferable. When you turn off the field it may cost some energy to randomize the domains again, so the material would prefer to keep a remnant magnetization. Impurities in the material may help to pin the domains.
Short anwser: it depends on the interactions, the number and properties of the valence electrons and the impurities of the material
Edit: typos | [
"The workability and corrosion resistance of iron and chromium are increased by adding gadolinium; the creep resistance of nickel is improved with the addition of thorium. Tellurium is added to copper (Tellurium Copper) and steel alloys to improve their machinability; and to lead to make it harder and more acid-res... |
what constitutes resisting arrest? if i just go ragdoll when arrested, would that count? | If you do not comply with the officers instructions, then you are resisting. They will instruct you to do certain things with your hands, and to get into certain positions, and if you just go rag-doll and refuse to comply then you will be treated as non-compliant and resisting arrest. It's passive resistance, not violent resistance, but resistance none-the-less, and the officers will likely apply cooperative measures to ensure that you obey their commands.
If an officer says "get your hands up" or "face me" and you just stand there all rag-doll he's going to take you down you so fast that your head will spin while it's getting a knee jammed into it. | [
"A person commits resisting arrest by intentionally preventing or attempting to prevent a person reasonably known to him to be a peace officer, acting under color of such peace officer's official authority, from effecting an arrest by: (1). Using or threatening to use physical force against the peace officer or ano... |
How strong/durable would a sheet of diamond be? | Diamond is the hardest naturally occuring substance, which means it's scratch resistant. But it doesn't mean it won't break. That's more of a toughness thing. Toughness measures how much energy it takes to break it.
Diamond has a toughness of about 2.0 MPa m^(1/2). Glass is about 0.7 to 0.8 MPa m^(1/2). So diamonds would be about 2.6 times tougher. Imagine throwing a rock to break a window. You'd need to throw a rock 2.6 times heavier the same speed or the same rock 1.4 times faster to break a diamond window than a glass window.
In case you're wondering, strength refers to how much force it takes to break something. If it flexes more, a material that's just as strong can be tougher. I can't find anything saying how strong diamond is though. | [
"Diamond is the allotrope of carbon in which the carbon atoms are arranged in the specific type of cubic lattice called diamond cubic. Diamond is an optically isotropic crystal that is transparent to opaque. Diamond is the hardest naturally occurring material known. Yet, due to important structural weaknesses, diam... |
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